The Megyn Kelly Show - What Post-Verdict Polls Show, and How ＂Apprentice＂ Made Trump a Megastar, with Hogan Gidley, David Pakman, and Ramin Setoodeh

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00:00:30.680 Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show.

00:00:32.540 Live on Sirius XM Channel 111 every weekday at New East.

00:00:42.100 Hey everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly.

00:00:43.820 Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show.

00:00:45.660 Today is the 80th anniversary of D-Day.

00:00:50.000 Gosh, think about that.

00:00:51.880 Later in the show, we're gonna pay proper tribute

00:00:54.220 to the men who fought and died on the beaches of Normandy.

00:00:57.300 You know, it was, it was, I was there.

00:01:00.520 This time last year, we went, remember this?

00:01:03.060 Maybe you do.

00:01:04.040 With my family, we went to France.

00:01:06.280 And that was our first stop, was Normandy.

00:01:08.800 And man, what a thing to be standing there on Omaha Beach

00:01:12.400 and see what those boys at Pont de Hoc did.

00:01:16.660 It was truly amazing, even then, 79 years later.

00:01:21.120 And we just can't let it go by.

00:01:25.460 You can't let it go by.

00:01:26.420 We need to continue teaching the next generation

00:01:28.460 what this day means in world history.

00:01:32.580 We're just, the only narrative they get now

00:01:34.360 is that the U.S. are the bad guys.

00:01:36.580 And the United States, we're not the bad guys.

00:01:38.840 We are the liberators of Europe and the world.

00:01:45.560 And Normandy stands as a shining example

00:01:49.580 of American courage, liberation, sacrifice for others,

00:01:55.340 and standing up for what's right.

00:01:57.940 It's hard to take in the risks that those boys took on

00:02:00.640 when you actually stand on the beach

00:02:02.180 and you realize how exposed they were.

00:02:04.520 You stand on the beach

00:02:05.400 and you see that there are these cliffs behind you,

00:02:08.080 these large cliffs.

00:02:09.060 And that's where all the Germans were,

00:02:11.160 standing up there with cannons and machine guns,

00:02:14.560 firing down.

00:02:16.360 So these boys rowed, you know, not rowed,

00:02:18.620 but boated up to the beach

00:02:21.920 with nothing to guard them, literally nothing.

00:02:26.400 The backs of the boats were pretty much all they had.

00:02:29.020 And then as they came up on the shores,

00:02:31.240 the backs of the boats flipped down.

00:02:33.920 And so there was nothing.

00:02:35.700 Between them and the gunfire

00:02:37.640 that was raining down upon them from these cliffs

00:02:41.140 that they were running toward.

00:02:43.060 They were running toward.

00:02:44.020 They knew that this was a suicide mission

00:02:45.940 and they did it anyway.

00:02:47.060 Average age, 19.

00:02:49.400 Think about that.

00:02:50.300 Think about what the 19-year-olds are doing today.

00:02:52.980 They're on TikTok.

00:02:54.480 They're tweeting out about their latest disorder.

00:02:56.700 It's just a completely different set of values, seemingly.

00:03:05.620 And that's what's sad about where we are today.

00:03:07.940 And this is an inspiration for what we'd like to get back to.

00:03:11.500 Not war, but courage and values and honor.

00:03:15.340 Today, there was a ceremony, as there always is, in France,

00:03:19.960 marking the anniversary.

00:03:21.880 And we're going to share it with you.

00:03:23.120 It happened today because there was a remarkable moment that happened.

00:03:26.100 Our president is there now.

00:03:27.140 And while most politicians today are paying tribute to the veterans,

00:03:31.880 thanking them for their service,

00:03:33.100 there are still, there are just a few World War II veterans

00:03:38.140 who served on D-Day still with us.

00:03:41.780 Getting fewer and fewer.

00:03:43.000 This could be the last year.

00:03:44.920 Wait until you hear what Hillary Clinton tweeted about today's anniversary.

00:03:49.520 For today's show, we're going to bring you something a little bit different

00:03:53.460 from what we normally do.

00:03:55.200 We have strong voices from the right and the left

00:03:58.360 to have a deeper discussion on today's political headlines,

00:04:01.240 including the meltdown in response to this Wall Street Journal report

00:04:04.560 on President Biden's mental health.

00:04:06.460 And the two guys we're going to use today to walk you through all of this

00:04:08.980 are Hogan Gidley.

00:04:10.980 Hogan was White House Deputy Press Secretary during the Trump administration

00:04:13.960 and Press Secretary for the 2020 Trump campaign.

00:04:17.140 And David Pakman.

00:04:18.100 David is a progressive political commentator

00:04:20.780 and host of The David Pakman Show on YouTube.

00:04:25.820 Hogan, David, welcome to the show.

00:04:27.880 Thank you.

00:04:28.720 Great to be with you.

00:04:29.560 Great to have you.

00:04:30.340 Well, let's just kick it off there.

00:04:31.240 We're going to talk about D-Day in just a bit.

00:04:33.840 But, you know, whenever I see these ceremonies, very stirring,

00:04:37.520 makes me proud to be an American,

00:04:39.260 makes me wish we had the kind of unity and love of country

00:04:42.780 that was near uniform back then.

00:04:46.300 We don't.

00:04:46.840 Things have changed.

00:04:47.860 But I don't know, Hogan, how do you think about the 80th anniversary today?

00:04:51.900 I was over there actually with President Trump, I think, at the 75th anniversary.

00:04:56.080 Still something that stirs my soul to this day,

00:04:58.640 talking to those people who were there.

00:05:00.580 I did some work with Elizabeth Dole in the past, too.

00:05:02.800 She has honor flights, bringing people from that war over to D.C.

00:05:06.600 to check out their monument.

00:05:07.560 But it's just so interesting to see how many people sacrificed everything they had

00:05:16.660 to go stand up for freedom.

00:05:18.460 The alliances we built as a country, the common thread we shared,

00:05:23.160 the love of America, regardless of the dark days that every country faces,

00:05:27.900 we had something unique and different.

00:05:30.400 We came out of those dark times more united, more understanding of our common enemies,

00:05:38.380 our common friends, and we've lost so much of that.

00:05:41.880 You touched on it there in the open.

00:05:43.760 It's so frustrating because when you see an event like this and this occasion marks such sobriety

00:05:53.760 of what these teenagers did, what they left, and you compare that to today,

00:06:01.540 I think the definition of bravery has really taken a hit in the last several decades.

00:06:07.680 You can go march in a parade.

00:06:08.880 You can stand up for any political topic du jour, and that's somehow brave.

00:06:14.220 It's not the same bravery as those kids had going and storming into that beach.

00:06:18.100 No question about it.

00:06:20.000 Yeah.

00:06:20.640 What do you think, David?

00:06:22.280 Yeah, I mean, I agree with a lot of what Hogan says, big picture.

00:06:27.560 It's interesting that he left out the example of how bravery has been perverted.

00:06:32.200 I'm sure he knows that Trump once said avoiding STDs was like his Vietnam,

00:06:36.980 which, of course, is another example of what I would point to as a degradation,

00:06:42.220 so to speak, of what counts as bravery these days.

00:06:44.860 But no, I mean, listen, humor, big, big picture.

00:06:47.500 You know, with Trump, it's hard to tell, isn't it?

00:06:50.080 Bigger, big picture.

00:06:51.520 I do have a real concern, not just with the way in which a lot of young people aren't learning history.

00:06:59.020 They're not learning critical thinking.

00:07:01.020 They're not learning a lot of different things that I wish they were learning.

00:07:04.460 And certainly World War II history is part of it.

00:07:06.780 I'm with Hogan right there.

00:07:08.580 Mm hmm.

00:07:09.300 I know it was.

00:07:10.740 Britt Hume was tweeting today about having covered the 50th anniversary and how it was just one of the most stirring things he's ever done.

00:07:16.840 And then you go to the cemetery, which is right there, and you see just the rows and rows and rows of of crosses and American names all over them.

00:07:23.600 And we always think about the 40th anniversary, which was when Ronald Reagan was in office and went over there in a speech written by Peggy Noonan, who's God bless her, still with us.

00:07:35.820 And, you know, it just makes you feel the thing.

00:07:38.320 You know, when you said teenagers, Hogan, it made me get that like you have like a chill, like, oh, my God, you think of our teens today doing something that big.

00:07:45.620 And here's just a reminder for those of you who haven't heard it, a little bit of Ronald Reagan at Ponte Hawk talking about it.

00:07:52.620 Their mission was one of the most difficult and daring of the invasion, to climb these sheer and desolate cliffs and take out the enemy guns.

00:08:02.300 Soon, one by one, the Rangers pulled themselves over the top.

00:08:06.760 And in seizing the firm land at the top of these cliffs, they began to seize back the continent of Europe.

00:08:13.060 These are the boys of Ponte Hawk.

00:08:15.620 These are the men who took the cliffs.

00:08:19.920 These are the champions who helped free a continent.

00:08:23.280 You all knew that some things are worth dying for.

00:08:26.440 One's country is worth dying for.

00:08:29.100 And democracy is worth dying for because it's the most deeply honorable form of government ever devised by man.

00:08:37.960 All of you loved liberty.

00:08:40.220 All of you were willing to fight tyranny.

00:08:42.020 And you knew the people of your countries were behind you.

00:08:46.300 The Americans who fought here that morning knew word of the invasion was spreading through the darkness back home.

00:08:53.360 They fought or felt in their hearts, though they couldn't know, in fact, that in Georgia, they were filling the churches at 4 a.m.

00:09:03.200 In Kansas, they were kneeling on their porches and praying.

00:09:07.520 And in Philadelphia, they were ringing the liberty bell.

00:09:12.140 Oh, I mean, just that kind of that's exactly what happened.

00:09:17.720 Right.

00:09:18.320 But I can't help but watch that, Hogan, and think, how do we go so wrong?

00:09:22.560 You know, that was the 20th century American military.

00:09:27.160 And this is not a knock on our military, God knows, but on our leaders and our policy choices in the 21st century, I think has got many people in both parties.

00:09:36.780 In a way, this is something that is unifying us today, feeling very reluctant to be pro-military in terms of our endeavors, not the guys, but like pro-war, pro-American intervention.

00:09:50.980 We've just learned to be very distrustful and to see these missions as about something very different, maybe money, you know, the so-called military-industrial complex, that the leaders don't necessarily have our boys and young women now in best interests at heart, the forever wars that take us nowhere.

00:10:11.420 I don't know.

00:10:11.680 It's like, well, look at the difference, the difference in those 80 years between the way America and Americans feel about the military and our endeavors.

00:10:18.340 Yeah, and David went political off the top, so let me do the same.

00:10:23.060 I think that's hard to accomplish in today's society because you have an entire political party who continues to tell the American people that our country is the cause of the world's problems.

00:10:35.420 We're the root of all evil.

00:10:37.240 And I mentioned the difficult times we've had in the past.

00:10:40.180 That's not unique to America.

00:10:41.620 It is unique, though, that we come out of those times usually more unified.

00:10:44.600 But that's hard to do because Democrats writ large basically apologize for America all the time.

00:10:52.980 They go on the global stage and they talk about how bad we are.

00:10:57.020 And while we do have issues, don't get me wrong, we used to share a common thread of respect and love for one another because we lived in the greatest nation, the greatest idea ever realized.

00:11:10.840 And so there's a reason that countries like Cuba and people around the world walk through their streets holding our American flag and chant liberty and freedom because they know what so many on the left don't believe, which is America is still the beacon of hope and of strength and of goodness and of democracy all over the world.

00:11:28.500 And that's hard to unite behind when half of the country doesn't believe it.

00:11:33.880 Hmm.

00:11:34.240 What do you what's your response, David?

00:11:35.420 What do you think?

00:11:36.560 No, I think I mean, listen, that there's a reason why Hogan and a lot of other former Trump folks and want to be Trump folks and current Trump folks are saying things like what Hogan's saying.

00:11:48.260 Democrats are a huge problem and they're apologizing and all these things.

00:11:51.660 These folks are desperate because they've lost everything since Trump won by 77,000 votes in three states in 2016.

00:12:00.600 And let me lay this out, Megan, if I can.

00:12:03.440 It's been eight years after that squeaker in 2016.

00:12:08.560 They blew the 2018 midterms.

00:12:11.580 Trump got defeated in 2020.

00:12:14.380 The 2022 red wave led to Democrats growing their margin in the Senate.

00:12:19.380 Twenty twenty three was a disaster.

00:12:22.080 After repealing Roe v Wade, every referendum on abortion has gone the opposite way.

00:12:28.080 So there's an incredible desperation.

00:12:30.160 And I have to say, Hogan, this is not a personal attack in any way.

00:12:33.260 You seem like a really nice guy.

00:12:34.320 We don't know each other.

00:12:35.480 There's almost an affirmative action with these Trump folks where if these were football coaches that had lost everything for a decade, they wouldn't.

00:12:45.060 If Kayleigh McEnany wouldn't be on Fox News, we wouldn't be going to Hogan and saying, give us your state.

00:12:50.580 They've lost everything.

00:12:52.520 And somehow through some kind of affirmative action, I guess we still hear from them.

00:12:56.820 But they're desperate, Megan, because this has gone gone sideways for a decade.

00:13:01.260 Wait, what are you suggesting, David, that because the Republicans have had a rough couple of electoral cycles, everyone who is on Team Trump should just go underground.

00:13:09.600 They shouldn't speak anymore, even though he's going to be the Republican nominee.

00:13:13.680 No, I'm glad to hear from Hogan.

00:13:15.780 But there's a degree to which we would say, wait a second, how could his analysis or it's not about Hogan.

00:13:22.020 How could any of these analyses really accurately reflect reality when these are the analyses that lost them everything in what four or five elections in a row?

00:13:31.200 I would approach it with caution.

00:13:33.400 Go ahead, Hogan.

00:13:34.680 What do you think of that?

00:13:35.240 Yeah, OK, let's unpack that by that rationale.

00:13:40.100 I guess we should never hear from Hillary Clinton again, either, because she lost any Democrat who loses an election.

00:13:46.080 You can't hear from them.

00:13:47.160 Anybody who worked in a White House, worked in administration, shouldn't have a say so.

00:13:51.880 And what's going on in this country?

00:13:53.560 Of course, this is a battle between those who love America and those who hate America, because the positions of both parties, they've been clearly articulated now for a long time.

00:14:04.220 And so I think moving into 2024, as we kind of reset and now we've lived under the failed policies of Joe Biden for the last four years, where Americans have been kicked in the teeth.

00:14:15.120 They can't afford gas and groceries.

00:14:17.320 Crimes are spiking all over their communities.

00:14:19.980 Wars are breaking out all over the world.

00:14:21.840 The southern border is bringing in, you know, fentanyl, killing our American citizens, human trafficking, child smuggling.

00:14:27.640 It's all up.

00:14:29.460 I think the stark reality of the fact that we've got an upcoming election where these two men uniquely have a record, not as a governor saying, if you elect me, I promise I'll do this.

00:14:42.360 I'm a senator.

00:14:43.240 I did this for my state.

00:14:44.460 Both of these folks were president.

00:14:46.560 The records are stark.

00:14:48.420 And the juxtaposition where we used to have to point back to Reagan, Megan, you just played an incredible speech.

00:14:54.540 Remember how good it was in the 80s?

00:14:56.100 We can say we had record-setting success in record-setting time three years ago.

00:15:01.960 It took one guy and his demented policies to tear us down this quickly.

00:15:07.820 So this election, no question, is going to be significant for the future of America.

00:15:13.520 But to say someone who lost an election or wasn't part of the winning team shouldn't have a say-so is so insane.

00:15:21.620 Go ahead, David.

00:15:23.180 Yeah, no.

00:15:23.780 Of course I'm not saying they shouldn't have a say-so.

00:15:25.720 What I'm saying is at this point, it seems clear the American people see through it.

00:15:29.280 And the people who lost five elections in a row are not the ones I'd be listening to on policy.

00:15:34.220 Now, with regard to a lot of the stuff that Hogan mentioned there, we can go one by one or not.

00:15:39.720 I mean, just to pick a couple of things, because there was a lot there, you know, on inflation.

00:15:43.680 I mean, listen, groceries and gas, they were even cheaper under Obama.

00:15:50.240 They were even cheaper under Bush and cheaper under Clinton.

00:15:52.820 I mean, yes, there is inflation.

00:15:54.780 We have not had a deflationary spiral, but inflation's at about 3% right now, which is what every serious economist says is the target.

00:16:02.620 With regard to the record right now, unemployment, I mean, it's like, it's almost silly for me to do this because the American people know, but we've never had unemployment below 4%.

00:16:12.460 We've never had unemployment below 4% for this long in 50 years, and it remains there.

00:16:18.220 Wage growth has outpaced inflation.

00:16:20.600 GDP is a completely normal and healthy 3%.

00:16:23.580 You know, it's like, people know this.

00:16:26.520 Why don't you try immigration?

00:16:28.000 Because that's in the news today, David.

00:16:29.360 Take, take that one up.

00:16:30.900 Well, what, I mean, ask me a question about it.

00:16:33.180 What's, what's the question?

00:16:33.940 Are we, are we doing better under Joe Biden when it comes to illegal immigration than we were under Trump?

00:16:38.540 How do you define better?

00:16:41.240 Fewer, fewer.

00:16:43.660 People continue to cross over illegally as they have for, what, 100 years, 200 years?

00:16:49.600 So it's the same.

00:16:50.180 I think that one of the funny things that has happened is that for months, I'm sorry, I think we're talking over each other.

00:16:57.920 No, I'm, I'm saying that's dishonest.

00:17:00.420 You're just like, you're saying, don't trust the Republicans on their messaging.

00:17:03.440 And you come on here and want to tell me that it's the same.

00:17:05.780 Like, they're just continuing.

00:17:07.060 No, there's no increase.

00:17:08.440 There have been periods of the, I'm glad.

00:17:10.120 A couple of months ago, we had 10,000 a day crossing the Southern border.

00:17:13.620 Go ahead.

00:17:14.300 Yeah.

00:17:15.560 Yeah.

00:17:15.980 Sorry, I think we're all talking over each other.

00:17:17.360 Now, you know, you realize two days.

00:17:19.120 Wait, I don't wake Hogan.

00:17:20.000 I'll bring you in, but let me defend that.

00:17:22.360 Go ahead.

00:17:22.560 Oh, okay.

00:17:23.000 No, listen.

00:17:23.520 I mean, based on the border patrol statistics, there have been times during the Biden administration

00:17:27.780 where crossings have on average been below where they were under Trump.

00:17:30.760 At some points they were above that.

00:17:32.620 The funniest part to me about immigration is that now that Republicans themselves torpedoed the bill they wanted

00:17:39.280 because Trump said, no, no, no, I need something to run on.

00:17:42.020 I need something to do.

00:17:43.020 Biden puts in place this limitation, which by the way, doesn't solve the reason people are trying to come here.

00:17:49.160 We need more immigration judges.

00:17:50.700 I'm glad Biden made this point now that he did it.

00:17:53.880 They're still not happy and they're saying, well, it's only for political reasons.

00:17:57.640 Why do you think Trump wanted to do this?

00:17:59.880 It's also for political reasons.

00:18:01.400 And so this seems like a political game to me when the reality, Megan, is we never permanently deal with DACA.

00:18:07.480 We never permanently deal with the reasons people even want to come over here in the first place.

00:18:11.840 It's a lame political football.

00:18:14.460 Wow.

00:18:15.240 You notice.

00:18:15.760 Go ahead.

00:18:16.120 It's fascinating to me for me here.

00:18:17.620 I appreciate I have to say, David, I appreciate you coming on the show because we don't get a lot of progressives.

00:18:21.680 And they know I don't really agree with them.

00:18:24.080 I don't know why not.

00:18:24.980 I actually really I appreciate you being here and saying, you know, the way you see that these things and the way the left views these things, because it's actually.

00:18:32.840 Well, I don't know about the left, but listen, I'm on the left.

00:18:35.480 Countries have a right to enforce immigration policy.

00:18:38.280 If you're here illegally, of course, you're subject to deportation.

00:18:42.080 I mean, I think that there's a caricaturizing that happens of the left on this issue.

00:18:46.640 I'm an immigrant from Argentina.

00:18:48.500 We came here legally.

00:18:49.900 I'm now an American citizen.

00:18:51.380 People still write to me and say you should go back to Argentina.

00:18:54.420 But listen, I I don't want the left characterized as something that it isn't on this issue.

00:18:59.700 You'll never hear me say a country doesn't have a right to enforce rights.

00:19:03.020 Otherwise, we'd have different policy.

00:19:04.500 I mean, Hogan, you work for the Trump administration.

00:19:06.240 The first thing that Joe Biden did when he took over was to reverse the three principal things that Trump was doing to stop the flow of illegal migrants across the southern border.

00:19:15.540 The remain in Mexico program, the asylum seekers on Moss and the construction of the border wall.

00:19:21.660 He shut it all down.

00:19:22.400 And he sold off all the parts you couldn't even try to rebuild.

00:19:25.120 There was no construction.

00:19:25.760 Thanks to what he did.

00:19:27.200 Yeah, there was.

00:19:28.240 Go ahead.

00:19:28.520 All right.

00:19:29.020 First things first.

00:19:30.680 You notice, Dave said, most economists will tell you that the correct percentage.

00:19:35.480 I know that's a bad impression, Dave, but nonetheless.

00:19:39.040 Yeah.

00:19:39.760 Economists don't matter in this scenario.

00:19:41.600 The American people do.

00:19:42.920 They're paying more for simple goods and services that they weren't paying under Donald Trump.

00:19:47.480 And they know that it's like a tax heaped upon their head.

00:19:51.600 As far as the border is concerned, because I was in the White House during this and I had a lot of fights with press folks about this very topic.

00:19:58.620 Joe Biden looks around and acts as though these things are just happening to him.

00:20:02.700 They're happening because of him.

00:20:04.820 In large measure, because of the policy.

00:20:07.640 He wants the border open.

00:20:09.340 Now, I would argue wants to flood this country with people illegally to get them on the government dime and then have them vote Democrat in perpetuity.

00:20:16.280 But this whole show press conference he had the other day is insane for so many reasons.

00:20:22.140 First of all, I was told the border was secure.

00:20:24.680 So what are we even talking about?

00:20:26.200 Second of all, I was told he couldn't do anything.

00:20:28.540 He, from the executive branch, made all these changes, but somehow that requires a legislative solution.

00:20:34.980 That doesn't make any sense.

00:20:36.420 He did it because you know it's going to get enjoined and the courts are going to step in and say, no, you can't do this.

00:20:40.660 And he can say, see, I was going to do something, but the Republicans wouldn't do it because MAGA and Trump said they couldn't.

00:20:46.340 You realize the Senate had a bill that could not pass the Senate.

00:20:50.060 The House had a bill.

00:20:51.520 That was H.R. 2.

00:20:52.820 The Senate won't take it up.

00:20:54.000 And the reason you know what Joe Biden wants to do won't secure the border at all.

00:20:59.360 Forget the nuance of it, even though we could go through point by point and show you how it doesn't.

00:21:03.400 The media and the left love it.

00:21:06.160 If it actually secured the border, they'd want no part of it whatsoever.

00:21:11.120 So to hear the left try and rewrite history that somehow immigration was just as high under Donald Trump is absolute insanity.

00:21:20.420 The American people know it because back then it was just along the southern border.

00:21:25.120 Now, thanks to Democrat Republican governors who had the guts to send people into these communities that say they wanted it when they got there, that lasted about 15 minutes.

00:21:33.700 And then they realize it was a strain on the education system, the health care system, the first responders, et cetera.

00:21:38.720 They realize this is no good.

00:21:40.440 Now, all of a sudden, he's coming to pretend as though he's trying to do something.

00:21:43.680 And one more thing about the courts.

00:21:46.040 He's going to back down because somebody will enjoin this.

00:21:49.000 He doesn't have a problem when the Supreme Court says you don't have the right to forgive student loan debt and pass off someone else's college tuition to another person.

00:21:58.360 He doesn't care about that.

00:21:59.480 He goes right through it.

00:22:00.620 When a court says, hey, you can't mandate vaccines on 80 million people, he says, out of hell with the courts.

00:22:05.640 I'll go through OSHA and try to force the American people to do that.

00:22:09.180 So spare me the pearl clutching.

00:22:10.980 This is all his fault.

00:22:12.720 And the American people know it because when he did overturn everything, every single person in the media said, this is the humane way to do it.

00:22:21.420 He's doing the right thing.

00:22:22.900 The administration joked and said, too many executive orders for us to even understand.

00:22:27.540 I don't even remember it.

00:22:28.360 We've done so many.

00:22:29.700 They know it.

00:22:30.640 They broke it.

00:22:31.760 They bought it.

00:22:32.920 Go ahead.

00:22:33.420 You know, I have to say that there's there's so much there.

00:22:36.540 I don't even know that we could go through every single thing.

00:22:39.520 But just to pick where Hogan started on on inflation and kind of ridiculing economists and this and that.

00:22:46.000 Hogan just said that because certain things were cheaper under Trump, it's a failure of Biden.

00:22:52.200 Will Hogan acknowledge, therefore, that because those very same goods were cheaper under Obama, Trump also did something wrong.

00:22:59.500 Well, I'm sure they were cheaper under Grover Cleveland, too.

00:23:03.540 That's not the point.

00:23:04.260 That's exactly the point.

00:23:05.780 The point is, where are we now?

00:23:07.240 You're just making that we get the inflation back to where we were.

00:23:10.080 And the answer is yes.

00:23:11.220 Are you calling for a deflationary spiral?

00:23:14.000 I mean, here's the thing I don't understand, Megan.

00:23:16.280 And I really I'm not asking this rhetorically.

00:23:18.600 I actually want to understand this as someone with a background in economics.

00:23:22.480 It's if inflation goes below zero, you create a deflationary spiral where people expect things to be cheaper in the cheaper in the future.

00:23:32.960 And so they wait to buy anything, which hurts the economy.

00:23:36.920 This is why.

00:23:37.580 Let me just say let me just add to that.

00:23:39.000 So even Trump said this on a stump just last week, he said we were around one point four percent, which is even better than zero for the exact reasons you just cited.

00:23:47.120 Keep going.

00:23:47.600 Two to three is typically what what you want.

00:23:49.920 That's where economic growth comes from.

00:23:52.120 So the thing I struggle with, and I really do want to understand it, because for me, people who know me know I don't play political games with gas prices.

00:23:59.400 I don't play political games with inflation.

00:24:01.140 I really my view on this is just from economics.

00:24:04.040 The goal from which traditional economics, not Marxist left wing stuff, traditional economics says you want around three percent inflation because that is an incentive to buy now rather than later.

00:24:17.940 And it's where wage growth and economic growth comes from.

00:24:21.060 Hogan seems to, I guess, want deflation, which doesn't seem to be good.

00:24:26.180 So just maybe someone who knows more can explain it to me.

00:24:28.860 No, I guess that's not happening now.

00:24:32.700 OK, let's go back to immigration.

00:24:35.320 Oh, go ahead, Hogan, if you want to.

00:24:36.700 No, all I was going to say was regardless of where the target percentage would be and economists agree and have these conversations all the time, the American people are suffering and they vote on their pocketbooks, as we all know.

00:24:48.380 And if they realize that prices for things are through the roof compared to where they used to be, they're looking for someone to blame.

00:24:55.980 And while Joe Biden tries to pass the buck consistently, he's the president.

00:25:00.440 And so people will rightly or wrongly, according to you, blame Joe Biden for it.

00:25:05.980 That's the fallout.

00:25:07.260 You I agree on the political analysis.

00:25:08.940 You make the decisions.

00:25:10.200 I agree on the political analysis 100 percent.

00:25:12.800 So on that, people vote on their perception of the economy.

00:25:15.980 No argument for me whatsoever, Hogan.

00:25:17.680 And Trump's got a 20 point lead over Joe Biden on that, according to the latest poll.

00:25:21.860 So they're definitely blaming Joe Biden.

00:25:23.960 And, you know, that is tied to some of the spending he did when he first took over.

00:25:27.000 Trump spent a lot, too.

00:25:28.860 I want to stay on immigration for a minute, though, because Joe Biden is now issuing these executive orders, which he said he couldn't do.

00:25:36.340 And what struck me was he's now going to do.

00:25:40.580 Let me get the numbers in front of me.

00:25:42.020 He's going to allow our asylum will be suspended when the threshold reaches an average of twenty five hundred migrants each day.

00:25:50.500 So he's not going to allow asylum seekers.

00:25:52.200 If we have an average of twenty five hundred migrants each day, he would lift that suspension when there's a daily average of less than fifteen hundred encounters.

00:26:01.320 What's amazing to me is I remember anchoring in the chair on Fox when Barack Obama's immigration head said.

00:26:11.060 One thousand a day is a crisis that that is a true crisis.

00:26:16.320 Whatever we do, we can't let it get to a thousand a day.

00:26:19.920 And now here we are with an influx of over what more than eight million since then.

00:26:25.740 That's not even counting the numbers that did come in under Trump, though he was committed to trying to stop that.

00:26:31.060 So now here we are with what let's call it ten million eleven.

00:26:34.180 I know the numbers are vastly bigger than that, but let's just call it ten million.

00:26:39.380 With this president saying twenty five hundred, definitely fifteen hundred is fine.

00:26:44.740 We won't suspend asylum, which is nuts.

00:26:47.160 I mean, that's absolutely nuts to me.

00:26:48.760 Dave, why is the threshold anywhere near this high?

00:26:53.660 This is to me.

00:26:55.300 Yeah.

00:26:56.180 Oh, so here's my view on immigration.

00:26:58.440 And I already laid out part of it.

00:26:59.880 I believe that without immigrants, the country collapses.

00:27:04.300 And I think it's abundantly clear, if anything, as far as legal immigration, we probably need

00:27:10.860 to increase it significantly to remain globally competitive, especially as birth rates are

00:27:16.060 starting to decline.

00:27:17.080 Big picture.

00:27:18.080 I think that that's a big issue here.

00:27:20.840 In addition to this, when it comes to the sort of crime narrative, we know from very good

00:27:26.840 studies, both state and federal, both documented and undocumented immigrants commit crime at

00:27:33.980 lower rates than natural born citizens.

00:27:36.240 Now, I know Trump loves the.

00:27:37.820 Let me just take you on in that.

00:27:39.860 Well, even one is too many.

00:27:41.060 Why do I have to deal with these illegal immigrants committing felonies against my friends or family

00:27:46.200 when they shouldn't even be here?

00:27:48.360 American born.

00:27:49.360 That's one thing.

00:27:50.360 I got to deal with Americans.

00:27:51.360 Why should I have to deal with somebody from Venezuela who snuck in here illegally and committed

00:27:54.120 a felony against a family member?

00:27:56.080 I'm not denying that if they are here illegally, they are subject to deportation.

00:27:59.800 But I'm trying to build up my view to try to have a conversation that goes beyond

00:28:02.960 the talking points on this.

00:28:04.080 So if we start talking, that's actual crimes who just ask Lake and Riley's family down in

00:28:09.360 Georgia.

00:28:10.360 Yeah.

00:28:11.360 All right.

00:28:12.360 I guess it doesn't really know if you don't want me to talk.

00:28:14.680 It's fine.

00:28:15.680 I'm I want you to talk, but I you're casting an aspersion that I'm spewing out some sort

00:28:20.100 of talking points to you and I'm saying actual I'm just saying you're not really digging more

00:28:24.400 deeply here.

00:28:25.400 We're not really digging more deeply.

00:28:26.700 So we have a situation here where obviously we are completely understaffed when it comes

00:28:31.480 to immigration judges and being able to adjudicate these asylum claims.

00:28:35.180 We also have circumstances in people's home countries that we could be better working on

00:28:39.020 at a fraction of what it costs to deal with the problem domestically, which no one ever

00:28:42.780 wants to do.

00:28:43.780 I actually think that one of the great tragedies on this issue is that both Democrats and Republicans,

00:28:50.540 for different reasons, have been unable to get us closer to what we might call a more

00:28:54.340 semi permanent solution on some of the low hanging fruit.

00:28:57.200 I mean, even most Republicans I talk to acknowledge the individuals brought here undocumented when

00:29:03.680 they were minors.

00:29:05.420 We're not going to send them back.

00:29:07.000 They need a path to normalization here, whether it's a permanent residence here.

00:29:10.760 So there's so many things everybody agrees on and for different reasons, either because

00:29:14.960 they don't want their political enemies to get the credit for it or because they want

00:29:18.240 to save it for when they get elected as something to run on.

00:29:21.500 We could deal with probably 80 percent of this.

00:29:24.240 I think this might be crazy.

00:29:25.760 I think Hogan and I could agree on 80 percent of this if we were in charge of this.

00:29:31.220 And it's disgusting to me how both sides to different degrees end up getting in the way

00:29:38.460 of permanent solutions for political reasons.

00:29:40.520 Now, obviously, as someone on the left, I'm more partial to the view of immigration that

00:29:45.820 I think is more on my side than Hogan's.

00:29:48.980 But that being said, I don't see any progress on this issue because everybody wants to keep

00:29:54.320 reserve and use it to their advantage in a way that goes beyond other issues.

00:29:58.020 And I think let me ask you about that, Hogan.

00:30:00.020 Let me ask you about that, because Trump, as you well know, his biggest critic on immigration

00:30:03.940 is Ann Coulter, who is a dyed in the wool conservative.

00:30:07.500 And she's as angry as anybody about the fact that, as Dave just said, the wall was not built.

00:30:12.720 Now, Trump had constructed some wall, but it was not completed the way Trump promised.

00:30:17.340 And to Dave's point, Trump had control of Congress and the White House.

00:30:22.340 The Republicans had control of Congress and the White House for his first two years of

00:30:24.900 his presidency.

00:30:25.680 He actually could have pushed massive reform through on immigration and did not do it.

00:30:31.840 Yeah.

00:30:32.320 With Paul Ryan as speaker, I don't think so.

00:30:35.260 I mean, some of the biggest fights we had internally at the White House were with Republicans who didn't

00:30:40.700 want to change the system, who didn't want to build the wall.

00:30:43.720 Remember, we had to use military money to do it.

00:30:46.280 Nancy Pelosi stood up many times and pounded her fist in those meetings or walked out and

00:30:50.240 said, I'm not giving a single dime to this border wall, and then went on to sign multiple

00:30:54.640 budgets that had border wall funding in it.

00:30:56.720 So Dave's right.

00:30:58.200 The whole thing's a political sham and theater, for the most part, I would argue more on the

00:31:02.540 left and the right.

00:31:03.240 But even still, the solution here has to do with preventing people from coming into this

00:31:11.020 country illegally.

00:31:11.780 We already let in more than a million people a year legally.

00:31:15.720 So how many should we let in, I guess, is the real question here.

00:31:19.500 And as far as what you point out at the beginning, Megan, think of it this way.

00:31:23.420 Every rape, every murder, every burglary, every assault, every DUI committed by an illegal

00:31:29.240 alien is 100% preventable because they should not be here in the first place.

00:31:34.860 And while our citizens may commit crime at a higher rate than legal or illegal immigrants,

00:31:40.960 we got our own problems.

00:31:42.980 Why would we import more?

00:31:44.920 And now with people flying in from other nations, the Chinese national spiking from a few hundred

00:31:51.020 in the first couple of years of Joe Biden, now 35,000, I think, already in this year.

00:31:56.060 We're not even halfway through the year.

00:31:57.380 That shows you we are in line for some serious, serious problems that we're going to have to

00:32:04.200 face and address in the future.

00:32:05.800 And it's going to be a difficult task if Donald Trump were to win re-election to fix all of

00:32:11.460 this because we're in such a hole now.

00:32:14.080 The American people hate where we are with immigration.

00:32:16.420 We're going to have to fix it.

00:32:16.980 That's why Joe Biden's doing something.

00:32:18.420 That's clearly why.

00:32:19.180 I mean, he's feeling the political pressure.

00:32:20.360 But just as it just says, Megan, I know you probably want to move on, Megan.

00:32:22.820 In 2018 under Trump, we had 396,000 illegal migrants come in.

00:32:26.880 And that's not including the gotaways, the ones who weren't, but we had just about 400,000

00:32:31.300 come in.

00:32:32.640 2023 under Joe Biden, add 2 million to that, 2.4 million.

00:32:37.680 It is not the same.

00:32:39.100 It is nowhere near the same.

00:32:40.760 We are at true crisis levels as defined by not Megan Kelly, but the Obama administration.

00:32:46.860 This is a crisis that needs something done about it.

00:32:50.560 What Joe Biden's done here is teaspoons in the ocean.

00:32:52.960 I got to take a quick break.

00:32:54.420 Hold your thought.

00:32:55.100 We'll come back after this.

00:32:56.740 More with Hogan and David straight ahead.

00:33:02.120 Guys, let's talk about the post-Trump verdict polling.

00:33:06.000 Starting to get a flavor now about a week, well, exactly a week after the verdict on whether

00:33:11.540 it moved the race, and this could change, of course.

00:33:14.140 It's only one week out, but here's where we stand.

00:33:16.980 Real clear politics averaged the three polls so far that show it's basically tied.

00:33:24.000 It's still tied.

00:33:25.620 Trump's up one, Trump's up two, Biden's up two, and another one.

00:33:29.320 And here's from YouGov, which polled 1,100 registered voters.

00:33:34.660 We haven't seen likely yet, likely voters.

00:33:37.100 The question was, has Donald Trump's conviction made you more likely to vote for him?

00:33:42.720 Two percent, yes.

00:33:44.140 Less likely to vote for him?

00:33:45.800 Three percent say less likely.

00:33:47.760 Neither.

00:33:48.320 Two.

00:33:49.220 Ninety-three percent say it has not caused them to reconsider at all.

00:33:52.460 So if anything, Trump lost one percentage point, but most people aren't moved in any way.

00:33:58.420 There was an interesting poll just looking at Georgia, and the question was, how does it

00:34:04.700 impact your vote?

00:34:05.460 Twenty-two percent, it makes me less likely to vote for Donald Trump.

00:34:09.080 Twenty-three percent, it makes me more likely to vote for Donald Trump.

00:34:12.820 And the rest say it doesn't make a difference to my vote.

00:34:14.960 So what we're seeing here is basically they don't care.

00:34:18.360 Are you surprised at that?

00:34:19.400 David, I'll start with you on that.

00:34:21.540 No, this seems pretty much in line with the pre-verdict polling, maybe a small shift away

00:34:27.700 from Trump.

00:34:28.920 I do think it's important to remember that Trump always says everything is great for him.

00:34:34.400 He said the Mar-a-Lago raid was great for his fundraising, and yet he lagged Biden's fundraising.

00:34:40.300 And then he said that the indictments were great for his fundraising and polling, and

00:34:44.040 he still continued to lag Biden in fundraising, and he's still lagging Biden by about 50 percent

00:34:49.300 in fundraising.

00:34:49.940 So I think the results are more or less what it seemed like they would be pre-verdict.

00:34:55.520 But I would take the claims that this is just doing such great things for his fundraising

00:35:01.180 with a bit of a grain of salt, because when the actual FEC disclosures come out, Biden's

00:35:06.080 about 50 percent ahead in any period you look at in fundraising, which is a pretty good proxy

00:35:10.820 towards enthusiasm.

00:35:11.680 Do you agree with that, Hogan?

00:35:14.200 I mean, I think it's interesting that David went to the money piece of it, because if you

00:35:19.300 zoom out, this whole lawfare campaign was not about snuffing down Trump's money raising

00:35:25.680 and increasing Joe Biden's.

00:35:27.440 Yeah, I think you've done such a great job on your show, kind of outlining the nuances

00:35:34.900 and the issues with all of these cases over the past several weeks.

00:35:40.380 And so it's been fascinating to watch.

00:35:41.880 He's not talking to you, Dave.

00:35:42.900 Oh, he meant you, Megan.

00:35:44.240 I'm so sorry.

00:35:44.760 I thought he was talking about the great job I've done.

00:35:46.620 I'm so sorry, Hogan.

00:35:48.100 But, you know, we're going to tune in.

00:35:49.220 I'm sure David has a great show, too.

00:35:50.060 And I bet you also had amazing coverage.

00:35:51.580 I'm sure David has a great show, too.

00:35:53.100 But it's interesting because I think people who watch your show, right, left and center,

00:35:58.720 are getting a better flavor of exactly what these attacks are all about.

00:36:05.080 And when 67 percent of the country believes that they're politically motivated, 59 percent

00:36:10.180 believe Biden is involved in them.

00:36:12.280 You kind of realize we level set.

00:36:14.240 So once the verdict comes down, what they wanted to do was bleed him dry financially, keep him

00:36:19.320 from the campaign trail.

00:36:20.620 They did that.

00:36:21.140 I don't think they really thought they would get a conviction because, as everyone said

00:36:25.060 on the right and the left, this was the weakest of all the cases.

00:36:27.780 But that was the cherry on top, and they got it.

00:36:30.400 But you saw a reaction from the Biden campaign and the administration after the verdict basically

00:36:35.120 saying, no, this is going to be about November.

00:36:37.560 Donald Trump said the same thing because I don't think the American people care that much

00:36:41.760 about this type of stuff.

00:36:43.280 As we talked about in the first segment, they care about their own ecosystem, their own environment,

00:36:48.800 and what they're paying for goods and services now versus a few years ago.

00:36:53.720 That's what the election is going to come down to.

00:36:56.360 And while weaponization of government and three-letter agencies against average citizens,

00:37:00.760 including Donald Trump, will be an issue in the campaign, I still think it comes back

00:37:05.460 to the economy and immigration inflation more than anything else.

00:37:09.280 Can I say a couple of things on that, Megan?

00:37:11.940 Yes, I can, but let me just tee this up because I wanted to get to this point, too.

00:37:15.400 Dave Ehrenberg, you know, Palm Beach County DA, a Democrat, he comes on the show, and he

00:37:19.920 and I were talking about how this verdict was going to affect the electorate.

00:37:23.800 And I said, Republicans are having the same kind of moment right now as they had when the

00:37:28.880 attacks were launched on Brett Kavanaugh, where it had a way of uniting the Republican

00:37:32.320 Party.

00:37:33.040 And he said, well, Democrats are having the same thing.

00:37:35.100 They're, you know, I've had Democrats stop me in the street saying they they've never

00:37:39.180 felt more enthusiastic about getting to the polls to vote for Joe Biden.

00:37:42.480 So it was an interesting window into my world and his world.

00:37:46.440 But the Times, the New York Times has a poll out today that captures exactly what's happening.

00:37:51.520 And what it showed was, OK, there was a swing in the overall numbers.

00:37:57.440 Trump pre the verdict was 48.

00:37:59.320 Biden was 45.

00:38:00.640 Now Trump is 47.

00:38:02.640 Biden's 46.

00:38:03.600 So I'm from a three point Trump lead to a one point Trump lead.

00:38:06.800 But on the enthusiasm shift, Trump dominated.

00:38:11.260 It shows that 18 percent of those who said that they support Trump, but they weren't planning

00:38:16.100 on voting like they just they like him, but they weren't that into him, have now decided

00:38:19.940 they must cast their ballot for Trump.

00:38:22.300 Just three percent of the comparable voters for Biden said the same.

00:38:27.000 So go ahead.

00:38:28.580 So a couple of different things that were mentioned there that I think are important to mention.

00:38:32.140 Hogan said that I can't speak to folks on the right, but that folks on the left were saying

00:38:36.560 that this case was the weakest.

00:38:39.140 It's not that we were saying it was the weakest.

00:38:40.900 We were saying it was the least serious compared to the other ones in terms of the charges.

00:38:46.140 But that doesn't mean the case is weak.

00:38:47.980 And obviously, the jurors didn't find it weak.

00:38:50.500 Second thing I want.

00:38:51.460 Many Democrats said it was weak.

00:38:53.120 Did you?

00:38:53.320 The New York Times had full op eds by former prosecutors saying this case is an embarrassment.

00:38:59.000 Yes.

00:38:59.380 OK.

00:38:59.660 I didn't see that particular op ed, but I'm representing the views of my views and what

00:39:03.660 and what others I speak to say.

00:39:04.960 Ellie Honig on what came out.

00:39:06.880 I mean, you saw his piece.

00:39:08.320 He said this is an embarrassment.

00:39:10.200 It's a Frankenstein.

00:39:11.240 I mean, OK, keep going.

00:39:12.160 I mean, the claim that this is a weaponized Biden DOJ to me is very much undercut by the

00:39:19.340 prosecution of Biden's own son, of Bob Menendez, of Henry Cuellar, the investigation into Cori

00:39:25.260 Bush and Biden's not getting involved on unity.

00:39:28.880 It's tough for me to see the Republican Party as united thanks to the indictments based on

00:39:34.700 almost 40 percent of the primary voters voting for someone other than Trump.

00:39:38.760 And then lastly, I was talking about the verdict, go back to you were talking about the verdict.

00:39:43.720 OK, well, we'll see what the effect of that is.

00:39:46.260 The indictment certainly did not seem uniting.

00:39:49.040 The last thing I've heard Hogan mentioned, the 67 percent of Americans believe the attacks

00:39:54.000 are politically motivated.

00:39:55.460 I looked everywhere for that poll, couldn't find it.

00:39:59.040 I know he repeats it and it's rarely challenged.

00:40:01.420 What I did find is a poll from Ipsos yesterday, which finds overwhelmingly that Americans think

00:40:07.920 the prosecution upheld the rule of law and was not motivated by politics.

00:40:12.680 So I couldn't find what Hogan's claiming.

00:40:15.160 But the most important question I have about the public opinion pieces and listen, public

00:40:19.300 opinion is we should have some minimum standard for abortion.

00:40:22.640 I can't imagine Hogan wants Roe v. Wade reinstated just on that basis.

00:40:26.380 So I don't even know why he keeps bringing up the public opinion.

00:40:29.380 Go ahead, Hogan.

00:40:30.200 Yeah, it's a McLaughlin poll, by the way, that cites a 67 percent.

00:40:35.860 Very low energy, low rank pollster.

00:40:38.560 But nonetheless, I'm citing the poll.

00:40:40.360 You cite a poll.

00:40:41.200 It's up to the American people one way or the other.

00:40:43.780 I think weaponization is a serious issue.

00:40:46.520 I don't think it's going to be a top five issue.

00:40:48.340 But one of the reasons it's so important to our side is that it just seems as though

00:40:53.420 if you hold a difference in opinion of those who have power, then you're targeted.

00:40:59.760 Because if you're sitting outside of an abortion clinic singing and praying, you get arrested.

00:41:04.520 If you go to a school board meeting and say, why are you teaching my children that they're

00:41:08.800 racist?

00:41:09.400 You get arrested.

00:41:10.180 If you go to Loudoun County, Virginia and say, well, I was my daughter raped in a bathroom

00:41:14.020 with a transgender kid you put there who's a man, you get arrested.

00:41:18.480 If you're a former president of the United States who participated in an NDA that happens

00:41:24.220 all of the time and the statute of limitations had gone past and now we're going to try to

00:41:30.160 make it a federal case, the whole thing reeks.

00:41:33.120 The American people understand it.

00:41:35.000 But again, regardless of the nuance, at its core, what the American people want is fairness.

00:41:41.560 And you pointed to the Hunter Biden case as an example of how, no, no, it's not biased.

00:41:46.620 I point to it as an example of how it is exactly biased.

00:41:50.420 I think the only reason we're there is because they had a sweetheart deal that somehow prevented

00:41:56.120 Hunter from ever getting charged for any of the other many crimes he's committed in the

00:42:00.400 future.

00:42:00.660 And the judge goes, uh-uh, I'm not falling for this one.

00:42:03.840 So now we're in a court case where Hunter Biden clearly has committed this crime and

00:42:08.440 we'll wait and see the outcome.

00:42:09.460 I, for one, don't think he's going to get convicted because it is Delaware.

00:42:12.340 But nonetheless, that's a weak example to point to, uh, for, for, for what about the

00:42:17.260 other guy and say the DOJ is not biased.

00:42:20.040 Yeah.

00:42:20.600 I mentioned three other examples.

00:42:22.100 If one interesting thing to me about the Hunter Biden case is, and by the way, I think if he

00:42:28.140 did this, then he should be found guilty and punished.

00:42:30.360 Like I, you know, when that congressman 10 years ago was found with money in his freezer

00:42:34.600 or Anthony Weiner, like I don't go out of my way to defend people because they're Democrats.

00:42:38.340 I'm not even a Democrat, but there is one interesting statistic about the Hunter Biden case, which

00:42:43.060 is if you want to talk about selective prosecution, only 0.04% of instances where someone puts incorrect

00:42:52.760 information on a gun application when they should not be allowed to have a gun 0.04% over

00:42:59.980 a 10 year period or even prosecuted.

00:43:01.940 So if there's any sort of, uh, uh, uh, arbitrary selection of who to go after, it seems that

00:43:07.980 that's a great example of it.

00:43:09.700 Can we, can we please talk about this trial, Megan, for a minute?

00:43:13.680 Yeah.

00:43:14.400 Is this, is this where we're shifting this interview to?

00:43:16.480 Cause I would love to have a conversation.

00:43:18.240 Love to talk about Hunter Biden's trial.

00:43:19.640 Okay.

00:43:20.900 The rich irony, the, the, the, the, the beautiful truth that submitted into evidence was the

00:43:30.300 Hunter Biden laptop for the whole basis of this is so wonderful.

00:43:36.480 51 Intel agents came out and said it was Russian disinformation had the markings of some type of

00:43:43.040 Russian operation.

00:43:44.740 Only one of two things could be true at the time.

00:43:47.460 Either one, these fifth tell 51 Intel agents have no idea how to spot Russian disinformation,

00:43:54.440 which is terrifying or two, they knew it wasn't and lied about it either way.

00:44:01.080 It's a very significant problem.

00:44:02.740 And while this gun charge is important in the here and now, and let me digress for a minute.

00:44:09.440 I don't want to hear one Democrat say a single word this election cycle about gun control,

00:44:14.120 paying your fair share in taxes or white privilege.

00:44:16.680 I think that's off the table now because of Hunter Biden.

00:44:19.080 I'm less concerned about this topic and I'm way more concerned about the millions of dollars

00:44:25.160 he received from foreign governments, 10% for the big guy, the 21 shell corporations,

00:44:30.400 the $20 million.

00:44:31.460 I'm way more.

00:44:32.560 You won't be hearing about that because the statute of limitations on those crimes was allowed

00:44:35.600 to expire by David Weiss, U S attorney for the district of Delaware.

00:44:39.700 Go ahead, Dave.

00:44:40.140 Yeah, it also just so happens that James Comer and his cronies have been waxing poetic about

00:44:46.300 all the stuff they're going to find and they're going to get him and all these things.

00:44:49.940 It's led to nothing and Comer privately or not privately in fundraising emails for six months

00:44:55.820 now.

00:44:56.660 Comer has been writing to people begging for money saying, we're not actually going to find

00:45:02.020 anything we can impeach this guy on.

00:45:03.820 Instead, you've just got to donate money so I can get reelected and keep doing more stuff

00:45:07.360 starting in 2025, it is the biggest ruse.

00:45:10.940 And what's fascinating is even a lot of Trump supporters that we've interviewed at rallies

00:45:16.180 see through it and they go, there's nothing there.

00:45:19.380 This guy's been in politics 50 years.

00:45:21.520 They've looked everywhere.

00:45:22.660 They've got nothing on the guy.

00:45:24.340 It does not look like the whole Comer investigation is going anywhere.

00:45:26.660 But I do think it's interesting that, you know, the question about we opened our show with

00:45:31.280 this yesterday, you had the 51 intelligence agencies, the experts saying it's Russian

00:45:38.780 disinformation, all the earmarks, et cetera.

00:45:40.980 Politico with its big blockbuster article, Russian disinformation, it got suppressed, the

00:45:46.300 New York Post reporting on the laptop.

00:45:47.780 And then the government opened its case.

00:45:49.380 The government opened its case with an FBI agent saying it's real.

00:45:53.020 And we knew it was real.

00:45:54.500 At the same time, all of those so-called Intel experts were saying it wasn't real.

00:45:58.140 We'd known for a year, I mean, the American public were misled actively by multiple organizations

00:46:05.800 and so-called experts connected with the Democratic Party because it was Joe Biden's emissary,

00:46:10.760 Anthony Blinken, who got that letter pushed out there.

00:46:12.880 And then they have the gall to turn around and say, oh, the Republicans are the ones who

00:46:17.760 interfere with elections.

00:46:20.160 They do.

00:46:21.140 I mean, this happened three weeks before the 2020 presidential election.

00:46:25.900 And like you look at that, how do you expect the American people to to trust any of these

00:46:30.400 experts or the Democrats claiming they have clean hands on this stuff?

00:46:33.420 You're asking me to read, Dave.

00:46:34.960 Yeah.

00:46:35.260 Oh, I don't think the American people are voting based on what intelligence agents say about

00:46:41.560 Hunter Biden's laptop.

00:46:42.860 I have a couple of thoughts on the story.

00:46:44.880 It's I don't think there's any evidence.

00:46:46.420 They did.

00:46:47.040 Show me a poll show that have they seen paying attention to that.

00:46:51.360 They were there.

00:46:52.280 There are multiple polls.

00:46:53.420 I mean, honestly, there's a hold on.

00:46:55.440 I have right now because there are multiple polls that showed that the let me give you

00:46:59.500 one that you would like.

00:47:00.420 OK, from your side of the aisle, PolitiFact, they're constantly fact checking only Republicans.

00:47:04.880 They were checking somebody who said that the polling was as much as 50 percent of the voters

00:47:09.380 saying I might have voted, changed my vote.

00:47:11.540 Had I seen it was on that laptop there?

00:47:13.380 They're fact checked, said it was more like 20 percent of the electorate who would have changed

00:47:18.060 their vote had they seen the laptop.

00:47:20.380 And there's multiple polls on it, Dave, multiple.

00:47:23.840 You're telling me there's polling right now that suggests the American people may base

00:47:28.260 their votes in November on what intelligence agencies said about the laptop?

00:47:33.520 We're talking about 2020 and 2020.

00:47:35.880 OK, stealing my understanding about 2020 is twofold.

00:47:39.140 Number one, that a lot of the suppression that people are talking about is illegal, explicit

00:47:46.320 images that violate both state law and the rules in terms of social media policies.

00:47:52.020 No one gives a shit about Hunter Biden's genitals.

00:47:54.440 It has to do with his corruption.

00:47:56.920 Yeah.

00:47:57.880 There is a there is a reason that the mainstream media's popularity sits somewhere between Congress

00:48:04.700 and COVID.

00:48:05.700 It's because for decades in this country, they've been lying to us about everything.

00:48:10.700 It's not just about who the left or these agencies prosecute.

00:48:15.860 It's also about who they protect.

00:48:18.840 And this is a clear example.

00:48:20.560 You mentioned the statute of limitation has has gone past on Hunter Biden's taxes.

00:48:26.180 Yeah.

00:48:26.780 So the statute of limitations on Donald Trump, they changed the law to get him.

00:48:31.220 And then now we find out they slow walk the the the potential charges in the Hunter Biden

00:48:36.220 case to prevent it from coming forward.

00:48:39.060 This is so obvious to so many people.

00:48:41.260 And it's not just that they're hearing the news.

00:48:43.280 They don't like it.

00:48:44.160 It has impacted their lives so negatively, whether it was the Russia collusion hoax or

00:48:50.300 or covid lies, of course, up one side, down the other.

00:48:54.760 Hunter Biden's laptop, Ashley Biden's diary, the Lafayette Square, whatever it had to do with,

00:49:00.760 if it's on the right, they tried to suppress it and they colluded with the government to do so.

00:49:06.020 The people are terrified by that.

00:49:07.980 And I think it's going to motivate them greatly in November.

00:49:10.860 We're going to get cut off in 18 seconds.

00:49:12.700 But I that was fun.

00:49:13.680 You guys are on a tight wire.

00:49:14.920 It's fun having you both here.

00:49:16.020 I don't know that you needed me, Megan.

00:49:17.840 I think you did a great job, Dave.

00:49:19.140 Thanks for being here.

00:49:19.960 Back next with Ramin Satuta of Variety magazine.

00:49:23.240 Don't go away.

00:49:23.880 So there's a new book out and it's about Donald Trump and his time hosting The Apprentice and

00:49:34.940 with some comparisons to his time as president of the United States.

00:49:38.920 And it was written with the cooperation of Donald Trump himself.

00:49:43.480 And we've got the writer on now.

00:49:45.080 But here's the backstory.

00:49:46.220 He was already, as you know, a household name when he walked into the boardroom of NBC's

00:49:51.480 reality show, The Apprentice, and then later The Celebrity Apprentice and all of it.

00:49:55.540 But that program thrust him into uncharted waters of fame.

00:50:00.220 Truly, he became internationally known.

00:50:03.100 Looking back, the show proved to be much more than just a hit.

00:50:06.720 It ultimately changed American history.

00:50:10.860 I mean, many would argue that it laid the foundation for and made possible

00:50:13.860 his successful run for president.

00:50:16.620 Ramin Satuta, who's co-editor-in-chief of Variety, is author of the new book.

00:50:21.740 It's called Apprentice in Wonderland, How Donald Trump and Mark Burnett

00:50:25.920 Took America Through the Looking Glass.

00:50:28.440 It's out June 18th and it's available for pre-order right now.

00:50:31.880 Ramin joins me now in this exclusive interview to share the untold story of The Apprentice.

00:50:37.880 Ramin, welcome.

00:50:39.260 Hi, Megan.

00:50:39.800 That was the perfect encapsulation of my book.

00:50:41.720 I think you and I need to go on book tour together because you described it perfectly,

00:50:44.960 set it up perfectly.

00:50:45.800 And this is the first interview I'm giving and I'm so excited to be talking to you.

00:50:49.180 This is a great idea, Ramin.

00:50:50.680 It was a great idea.

00:50:51.460 Like all I could think when I was reading this was we need to like reboot The Apprentice.

00:50:55.820 It made me want to see all this cast of characters again because you go into some of the ones who

00:51:00.820 became stars and the controversial quote firings of them by Trump and how Trump negotiated his way

00:51:06.360 through all of it and it's like a fascinating window into his real rise to stardom.

00:51:11.880 Like we knew him in New York.

00:51:13.740 Generally in America, people had an idea.

00:51:15.620 It was like this playboy real estate mogul.

00:51:18.180 But it was this show that not only made him a household name, but really this is what made him

00:51:23.240 rich.

00:51:24.540 Like the real estate empire was one thing, but like the real money came from this show.

00:51:29.160 He made, according to filings, he made $213 million over the 14 seasons that he hosted

00:51:35.220 The Apprentice.

00:51:36.100 But I think even more importantly for him was that The Apprentice made him into a national

00:51:41.200 hero.

00:51:42.040 Americans love Donald Trump because of the character he played on The Apprentice, this

00:51:45.560 tough, smart, funny boardroom boss that would go in every week and fire people and hire people.

00:51:51.620 And he was always in charge.

00:51:53.040 And I think that really set the template for the campaign.

00:51:56.040 And that's what Eric Trump says.

00:51:57.900 That's what Donald Trump says.

00:51:59.260 I spent a lot of time interviewing Donald Trump for this book because I really wanted

00:52:03.320 to talk to him about his memories of the show, what the show meant to him.

00:52:07.160 And it still means a great deal to him.

00:52:08.980 The reason he gave me so much time, we talked starting in 2021 through 2023 through the winter.

00:52:15.500 We talked six times.

00:52:16.860 I sat down with him four times.

00:52:18.260 I was in a boardroom in Trump Tower.

00:52:19.700 We watched clips of the show together.

00:52:21.300 Was that this show still means very much to him.

00:52:23.380 And he has such great memories of hosting the show.

00:52:26.420 Wow.

00:52:26.780 All right.

00:52:27.340 So let's take us back because the way he got the show and his deal for season one versus

00:52:32.940 season two is actually very interesting.

00:52:34.700 So how did how is it born?

00:52:37.300 It was born actually because of Survivor, because Mark Burnett, the super producer that

00:52:41.800 created Survivor, was looking for a place to shoot one of the finales of Survivor.

00:52:46.260 And he came upon Woolman Rink, which Donald Trump had renovated and owned at the time.

00:52:51.720 And so it's getting rink in Central Park.

00:52:53.140 And so they met there and Mark Burnett was looking for a different kind of reality show

00:52:59.400 like Survivor, but set in a city where instead of competing to see who would survive, it was

00:53:04.880 competing to see who would thrive.

00:53:06.460 And upon meeting Donald Trump, he had this idea that, oh, maybe Donald Trump could be the

00:53:10.620 boardroom boss in the first season of the show.

00:53:13.120 But in Mark Burnett's mind, he was going to change the boss every season and have a different

00:53:17.900 celebrity in the same way that he also is behind The Voice.

00:53:20.520 And on The Voice, every season there's a different celebrity singer judging all the contestants.

00:53:25.520 And so in his mind, he thought, OK, we'll do this with Donald Trump for a year.

00:53:29.600 They paid Donald Trump for one season.

00:53:31.440 Jeff Zucker was running NBC Universal at the time.

00:53:34.220 Zucker later went on to run CNN and went on to fight a lot with Trump publicly.

00:53:38.040 But at the time, he was running NBC and they were only paying Trump $25,000 an episode.

00:53:44.120 And he came.

00:53:45.080 And by the way, you point out in the book that before this offer, Trump had received a number

00:53:49.660 of offers to do reality television, but he was not interested.

00:53:54.020 They were too small ball.

00:53:55.760 This was the era of the Osbournes, where it was like you saw the Osborne family interacting

00:54:00.400 and Sharon yelling at the kids and fighting with her husband.

00:54:04.060 And so I think there was concern for Trump.

00:54:06.400 He didn't really want to do something with his family or his kids or him trying to be

00:54:10.020 a good dad or a bad dad or whatever they were going to capture on air.

00:54:13.780 And so this appealed to him because he got to be in charge and he got to talk about his

00:54:18.020 businesses and he got to film it in Trump Tower.

00:54:20.800 And it was really an advertisement for not only him, but his entire family.

00:54:25.300 And so you think about it now is it makes perfect sense, right?

00:54:27.700 Because he what is Trump above all else?

00:54:29.220 He's a marketing genius.

00:54:30.280 Keep going.

00:54:31.620 And so he comes in.

00:54:33.320 He does the first season in 2004.

00:54:35.500 It premieres in the winter of 2004.

00:54:37.340 Wait, stand by, stand by.

00:54:39.940 Sorry to interrupt you again, but we do have a little clip from season one and the opening.

00:54:45.700 Watch it.

00:54:46.020 New York, my city where the wheels of the global economy never stopped turning.

00:54:57.580 My name's Donald Trump.

00:54:58.840 I was billions of dollars in debt, but I fought back and I won.

00:55:02.940 I'm looking for The Apprentice.

00:55:06.500 And who will be The Apprentice?

00:55:09.060 Wow, that's 2004.

00:55:12.160 So different from where it would ultimately wind up, right?

00:55:14.240 With the money, money, money, money, money.

00:55:17.120 Very different.

00:55:18.440 Well, the theme song comes after that, but that is the intro to the very first episode.

00:55:22.560 And he that's how Americans got to know him.

00:55:25.140 And he seems powerful.

00:55:26.200 He seems cool.

00:55:26.980 He seems smart.

00:55:28.200 He seems very likable.

00:55:30.080 And Donald Trump and I actually watched that opening together.

00:55:32.680 And we watched the theme song together.

00:55:34.060 He hadn't seen it in years and it brought so much joy to him.

00:55:36.420 He smiled.

00:55:36.920 He was very happy, reminiscing about how popular he was.

00:55:39.980 But it became very quickly one of the biggest shows on TV.

00:55:42.680 Not as big as maybe sometimes he says in terms of his ratings, because he sometimes inflated the ratings.

00:55:47.320 But it was a huge show.

00:55:48.700 The season finale for the first season was the biggest show in America that week.

00:55:53.900 And Donald Trump became a megastar.

00:55:57.080 Yes.

00:55:57.700 OK, so did this show take off immediately?

00:56:00.740 Was it an instant hit?

00:56:03.140 It was actually an instant hit.

00:56:04.680 The first episode did very well.

00:56:06.660 And the second episode did very well.

00:56:08.380 And then NBC made the mistake of programming it against American Idol in the first season.

00:56:12.820 And it stopped doing well.

00:56:14.460 Donald Trump was very upset about that.

00:56:15.980 And then they quickly fixed it and moved it back to Thursday night.

00:56:18.700 But back then on NBC, being on Thursday night, that was for friends.

00:56:22.440 That was for Will and Grace.

00:56:23.360 That was for the best programs.

00:56:24.500 And they didn't think reality rose to that occasion.

00:56:27.540 And one of the things that Jeff Zucker did at the time, he thought, no, this makes sense on Thursday nights.

00:56:31.680 The richest, most expensive advertisers are going to back the show because it's about business.

00:56:36.220 And it's going to attract a smart audience.

00:56:38.100 And it did.

00:56:38.680 Mm-hmm.

00:56:40.060 OK, so now we get to season two.

00:56:43.180 And it's a whole new ballgame because Trump intentionally did not do a long-term deal.

00:56:50.440 And NBC didn't want a long-term deal.

00:56:52.720 Oh, and before I get to that, can you just spend a minute on how Trump overruled his agents, his agent Jim Griffin, who I used to know a little, who did not want him to have anything to do with this?

00:57:02.400 Yeah, so he got his agent through Regis Philman.

00:57:04.300 Trump was very much a New York figure, loved hanging out with a lot of celebrities, was very liked by a lot of celebrities at the time.

00:57:09.400 And so he got his agent Jim at William Morris.

00:57:11.760 And Jim said, you absolutely shouldn't do this, Donald.

00:57:14.120 This is going to be terrible for your career.

00:57:15.900 They're going to make fun of you.

00:57:17.080 It's not going to be successful.

00:57:18.480 The tabloids are going to make fun of you even more.

00:57:21.520 And Donald Trump actually, you know, there was a moment where he wasn't quite sure.

00:57:25.540 And then he decided to move forward because he had given Mark Burnett a handshake and decided to move forward.

00:57:30.320 And there really wasn't an understanding when he signed on for what the show actually was going to be.

00:57:35.400 Mark Burnett kind of pitched it.

00:57:36.520 There was a soft pitch.

00:57:37.640 He brought in George and Carolyn, two of his advisors from the Trump organization.

00:57:41.080 But no one really had a real understanding of how these, because the contestants were separated into men and women.

00:57:46.300 And they would run around New York City doing all these tasks.

00:57:49.360 And Trump would appear at the beginning of the episode, at the end of the episode.

00:57:52.800 But there was real, they couldn't really visualize what this was going to be until that first season aired.

00:57:57.620 And then they realized this was ratings gold.

00:58:00.180 And then we get to season two, because NBC doesn't have a contract with Trump.

00:58:04.400 And now, and also I should spend one minute on you're fired, because you write about how that famous phrase, you're fired, came into being.

00:58:12.020 So Trump says that it was supposed to be something much milder.

00:58:15.040 And he was in the first boardroom, he was firing a man named David Gold for the very first episode.

00:58:20.360 And he said that he ad-libbed it.

00:58:22.660 And it came to him kind of in the moment.

00:58:24.480 And according to Trump's memory, when he said it, the entire crew cheered, the entire cast cheered.

00:58:30.060 And they knew that that was the catchphrase that was going to end every episode.

00:58:33.200 And it was a very effective catchphrase.

00:58:35.240 Those Trump dolls that everyone bought in the early 2000s would say, you're fired.

00:58:39.600 And it really followed him everywhere.

00:58:41.260 For many years, people would point to him and say it, because they loved that.

00:58:44.220 They loved the fact that he was tough, and he could make decisions, and he was decisive.

00:58:47.880 And it really, again, set the template for the kind of president that he campaigned as.

00:58:52.960 Yeah, I hear a rumor, it's unconfirmed, that James Comey sleeps with one of those little dolls next to his bed.

00:58:58.100 And when he rolls over and hits it, he, oh, oh, but it's like part of his trauma therapy.

00:59:02.080 Sorry, political joke.

00:59:03.260 Okay.

00:59:04.720 Yeah, you write in the book that it was originally supposed to be a phrase, something like,

00:59:08.380 you won't be joining us for the rest of the season, or something like wordy and too mild, and he changed it.

00:59:15.740 Something to the effect of, yeah, you're not going to cut it.

00:59:17.880 Um, something very, very weak, and he changed it to something that was stronger and much catchier.

00:59:24.820 Okay, so now comes, so season one worked out beautifully, but when we last left off,

00:59:31.160 Mark Burnett was thinking he would replace Donald Trump with a different celebrity-type mogul.

00:59:37.180 So what happened?

00:59:38.660 So they realized that this wasn't going to be a good idea.

00:59:41.160 Once you have a huge hit, the scale of The Apprentice, you need Donald Trump to stay on the show.

00:59:45.520 And so that's when things got very nasty between Trump and Jeff Zucker.

00:59:49.500 And Trump asked, because he was looking at the landscape of TV, he didn't know a lot about

00:59:54.200 Hollywood, but he was very informed, interested, followed all the ratings, very, very interested

00:59:59.180 in the ratings.

00:59:59.740 He'd get the ratings by fax, he'd fax it to people.

01:00:02.440 Everyone in Hollywood was based in, obviously, in LA, and Trump was in New York, so he'd get

01:00:06.100 up extra early, get the ratings, and share the ratings with everyone else.

01:00:08.860 So he knew how big the show was, and there was a period where Friends was in reruns as it was

01:00:13.260 about to end, and Trump saw that The Apprentice was doing better than Friends.

01:00:17.000 And so he demanded, because there were six actors on Friends, and at the time, each of those actors

01:00:21.480 were making a million dollars an episode, Trump demanded six million dollars an episode from NBC

01:00:26.460 to come back to The Apprentice for season two.

01:00:29.440 And this is 2005 numbers, which, you know, six million, it sounds like a lot per episode now,

01:00:34.980 but it was even more 20 years ago.

01:00:37.700 So what happened?

01:00:39.400 And you're filming 24 episodes a season, so he's asking for 90 million dollars to be

01:00:44.640 on The Apprentice for three months.

01:00:47.060 Even by now, that's an astronomical amount of money.

01:00:50.120 Movie stars don't even get paid that.

01:00:51.940 And so Jeff Zucker said, absolutely not.

01:00:54.580 They got into a huge fight.

01:00:55.640 That was the first time Donald Trump probably fought with Jeff Zucker.

01:00:58.500 They got into a huge fight.

01:00:59.940 Jeff Zucker said, forget it, we'll get someone else.

01:01:01.720 Trump said, fine, get someone else.

01:01:03.040 They went back and forth.

01:01:04.680 And then a few days later, Zucker called Trump and said, you know what?

01:01:07.960 Actually, we need you.

01:01:08.920 And so they signed a deal.

01:01:10.480 But the thing about The Apprentice that I found really interesting, because a lot of people talk

01:01:14.640 about it and they're not really sure how Donald Trump made so much money off the show.

01:01:18.660 But Mark Burnett, who created the show, had this very smart thing that he did when he sold the show to NBC in that he said that all the product placement revenue, because they were brands that would come in and sell jeans or food or cereal or whatever it was as part of the task.

01:01:32.860 All of that revenue, he said, went to him as a creator of the show.

01:01:37.220 And then to appease Trump, Mark Burnett split that revenue with Trump.

01:01:41.340 So every episode in the second season, as this was one of the biggest shows on TV, as they were having General Motors come in and show off their new car or Mattel come in and show off their new toy, that money went directly into Trump and Mark Burnett's bank.

01:01:53.760 And that is really where Donald Trump made his fortune from The Apprentice.

01:01:57.620 There's a lot of confusion and back and forth and questioning about how much money Trump actually made on the show.

01:02:02.540 But he made a significant amount of money because of this deal that Mark Burnett had engineered.

01:02:07.300 And it really allowed Trump to become rich in a different way from all the revenue that he was making off The Apprentice.

01:02:14.640 It's fun.

01:02:15.300 Mark Burnett has very strong selection powers because I'll tell you, not only did he see Trump in this role, but he owns my sweet thunder.

01:02:22.260 She's my good dog.

01:02:23.920 He owns Thunder's sibling.

01:02:26.180 So his wife and I sometimes share pictures of our dogs because they're siblings.

01:02:31.140 So he chose from a great litter just like I did.

01:02:33.820 And then things went south after Thunder.

01:02:37.400 Trigger.

01:02:38.340 Okay.

01:02:38.660 Anyway, so Mark Burnett is broling in dough.

01:02:41.760 So is Donald Trump.

01:02:43.040 They've got a deal set for season two.

01:02:46.040 And what was Trump like?

01:02:47.460 So this is like he wasn't, I mean, as comfortable on TV, I'm sure, in the early days as he ultimately would become.

01:02:56.060 What was he like, especially early on?

01:02:58.560 What was interesting was I really wanted to write a book that was fair to Trump, which I know there's been a million Trump books out there.

01:03:07.100 And everyone, you know, a lot of them say similar things or have similar stories.

01:03:10.780 I wanted to write a book that was fair to Trump and also told the definitive origin story of who Trump was.

01:03:15.520 And I actually was writing for The Apprentice at the time.

01:03:17.380 That's how I came up with this idea.

01:03:18.360 I was a young reporter at Newsweek, and I was writing about the show.

01:03:21.040 And so I would call Donald Trump up.

01:03:22.500 He would always take my calls at the time.

01:03:24.540 He would give me a quote to – he didn't even know necessarily I was from Newsweek.

01:03:28.420 He would think I was from Newsday or whoever I was from.

01:03:30.440 It didn't really matter to him.

01:03:31.460 He just loved talking to journalists and loved talking to press.

01:03:33.800 And he still – I think he still does because that's why he kept talking to me and wants good press.

01:03:40.240 That's really very, very important to him.

01:03:42.340 But at the time, Donald Trump wasn't really familiar with Hollywood and how the industry worked.

01:03:47.760 And he channeled a lot of time in these contestants.

01:03:51.020 And he – in a lot of reality shows, it's not really what you see, obviously.

01:03:55.020 It's all edited and created.

01:03:56.620 And there was a lot of that on The Apprentice.

01:03:58.500 But off camera, Trump became friends with the contestants, tried to mentor them, would invite them to his office.

01:04:03.840 Would hang out with them.

01:04:04.880 Would ask them to work for him for free.

01:04:06.900 He got really attached to the contestants in season one and two.

01:04:10.060 And what's really interesting is that although some of the contestants don't really politically like him or politically want to vote for him,

01:04:16.880 they almost all universally say how welcoming he was, how warm he was, how charismatic he was,

01:04:23.140 even though many of them didn't think that he would be or had preconceived notions.

01:04:27.900 So there is a quality to him.

01:04:29.780 And Donald Trump and I talked about this.

01:04:31.280 He calls it his own star power and compares himself to Clint Eastwood in the same way that Clint Eastwood makes Dirty Harry movies.

01:04:37.300 But he had – believe it or not, big surprise there.

01:04:40.740 But I'll let your listeners decide whether or not that analogy holds.

01:04:44.720 But there was a real alchemy between him and the contestants.

01:04:48.580 And he loved this show.

01:04:50.000 He loved being on camera.

01:04:51.160 He loved the attention.

01:04:52.280 He loved the press.

01:04:53.140 He did every interview he was asked to do.

01:04:55.100 It didn't matter who it was.

01:04:56.040 And he also didn't employ a publicist.

01:04:57.760 So journalists could call his office, get him on the phone, and he became this TV star that was really, really exciting.

01:05:03.940 It was a very exciting time for him.

01:05:05.240 So he did have – I shouldn't underplay the amount of PR exposure Donald Trump had prior to launching The Apprentice.

01:05:15.060 I mean, he was all over the news.

01:05:16.880 As we saw recently, we're talking about that Central Park Five case.

01:05:19.980 You know, he would see something.

01:05:21.440 He would write an op-ed.

01:05:22.280 He would go on television, Larry King and elsewhere to talk just about his views.

01:05:25.960 He was always very outspoken politically and culturally and would constantly be interviewed by press, local and national.

01:05:34.440 So it wasn't like he was a stranger to the media.

01:05:36.280 But this is his first time hosting a big show and being actually like a paid kind of actor, star of a show.

01:05:44.940 And what do people say, you know, like the production staff and so on, that he was difficult to work with or that he was nice to work with?

01:05:51.800 Yeah, this is the first time he was really front and center.

01:05:54.820 He'd been in Home Alone.

01:05:56.080 He'd done a lot of cameos.

01:05:57.440 But always he was kind of in the background.

01:05:59.020 So this made him into a star.

01:06:00.840 And also in New York, people knew him, but this made him a star in millions of homes around the country.

01:06:06.460 Truthfully, in the early days of the show, the biggest issue was that he wanted to spend so much time with the contestants.

01:06:13.860 And the producers were trying to – once the contestants were fired, they really were supposed to go on their way.

01:06:18.920 And Donald Trump kept trying to hire them, bringing them into the Trump organization, using them for publicity, using them to advance his own brand.

01:06:27.540 And it was almost like he had these adoptive kids that he really, really wanted to be with all the time he would throw his birthday party and invite them.

01:06:34.200 But the stories that I had from the early seasons, and certainly there have been stories that have been reported when he ran for president the first time.

01:06:41.360 And we've heard from people behind the scenes and producers and things.

01:06:44.460 Not everything was perfect.

01:06:45.380 But in the early days of The Apprentice, there was a lot of goodwill towards him, and he was just very excited to be on the show.

01:06:54.000 He didn't necessarily understand what was happening sometimes because he wasn't watching the tasks.

01:06:58.100 So there was a lot of work in the editing room to get the narratives of the show to work.

01:07:02.560 But in the early seasons, people thought he was a character, and it was fun to be around him.

01:07:07.640 Mm-hmm.

01:07:09.340 I've interviewed Trump multiple times, and every single time when we've sat down for the interview or just before, he directs the lighting.

01:07:20.120 He makes sure the camera shot is the way he wants it.

01:07:23.060 He looks at the set.

01:07:24.300 He clears it of debris.

01:07:25.440 Like, he cares.

01:07:26.540 He approaches it like a seasoned television veteran.

01:07:30.320 And you almost forget that's because he was the host of the most popular show in America for, I don't know, how many years did it run?

01:07:38.000 It was 14 seasons.

01:07:39.680 It's a long time.

01:07:40.640 They do two seasons a year because it was so popular.

01:07:43.840 Wow.

01:07:44.200 But he is someone who feels very comfortable in front of a camera and loves being in front of a camera.

01:07:49.660 Yes.

01:07:50.300 So just, I forgot to play this, but here's a little walk down your fired lane.

01:07:55.180 Watch this.

01:07:55.680 Sat 26.

01:07:58.200 You're fired.

01:07:59.760 You're fired.

01:08:00.700 You're fired.

01:08:01.520 You're fired.

01:08:02.280 You're fired.

01:08:03.300 You're fired.

01:08:04.220 You're fired.

01:08:05.080 You're fired.

01:08:05.900 You're fired.

01:08:06.800 You're fired.

01:08:08.260 You're fired.

01:08:08.860 And Ravine, you actually write about the little hand gesture like you're fired, like in and out with the hand.

01:08:15.600 For the listening audience, it's like your kind of fist, your open fist is up by your shoulder and you flick it forward and pull it back.

01:08:22.300 He was so, we watched that clip too.

01:08:24.360 We were showing the same clips.

01:08:25.860 It's like you're reading my mind.

01:08:27.260 But Trump and I watched that clip too.

01:08:28.640 And your book.

01:08:29.940 And he was so happy to see himself deliver that line.

01:08:34.260 And he also talked about how, you know, I didn't need very many takes.

01:08:38.940 I was really good on camera.

01:08:40.420 I would just deliver it and everyone would agree with what I said.

01:08:44.100 It was really, it's, you know, it's his calling card.

01:08:45.940 He's very, very proud of what he accomplished on the show.

01:08:48.580 So you spend a little time in the book on the greatest star of The Apprentice ever after Trump.

01:08:53.580 And that is Omarosa, who achieved first name only status.

01:08:58.920 Here's a quick look back at some of her antics.

01:09:01.960 I can't tell that Katrina, because we sleep in the same room, yet you couldn't say to me, I had a problem with X, Y, Z.

01:09:08.140 Because I felt like you were being fake.

01:09:09.700 I think being fake is waiting until I'm in front of seven women and then attack.

01:09:13.560 No.

01:09:15.620 I'm very nice to everybody.

01:09:17.140 I get along with everybody here.

01:09:18.520 I get along with, you know what?

01:09:19.980 You know why?

01:09:20.400 Because I'm a good person.

01:09:21.920 I am true to myself.

01:09:22.980 This is where the personal attacks come in.

01:09:25.900 I didn't come here to make friends.

01:09:27.220 I said that from day one.

01:09:28.860 And if you all stop being so freaking sensitive.

01:09:31.480 Okay, so Omarosa was the reason to tune in.

01:09:35.740 She was on multiple times.

01:09:37.200 She came back and Trump knew it.

01:09:39.800 They loved Omarosa.

01:09:41.360 And even watching that now, like when I went back and rewatched the show, it's still an incredibly entertaining show, especially that first season.

01:09:48.120 It's like the perfect season of reality TV.

01:09:50.600 It's fun.

01:09:51.260 The challenges are fun.

01:09:52.280 Trump is the perfect person to host the show.

01:09:54.520 It's just really, really entertaining.

01:09:55.980 And with Omarosa, she came in.

01:09:58.400 She had some very limited experience in the Clinton White House as an aide.

01:10:02.020 And she came in.

01:10:03.420 Her career really wasn't going in the direction she wanted to.

01:10:05.840 So she tried out for the show.

01:10:07.480 And she became the character that everyone loved to hate.

01:10:11.160 She would say one thing to one person, one thing to another person.

01:10:14.240 And they made her out to be this huge villain on The Apprentice.

01:10:17.800 And Trump really liked that because she got so much attention, but not any attention that would take away attention from him.

01:10:25.220 So they all thought that Omarosa was great for ratings.

01:10:27.800 They brought her back twice when there were celebrity editions of The Apprentice in later years.

01:10:31.720 And she obviously went with Trump to the White House.

01:10:35.160 But Trump said something very-

01:10:36.060 Yeah, I was going to say.

01:10:36.520 And then he brought her back another time.

01:10:38.640 He had her working in the White House.

01:10:40.040 I actually interviewed her during that time.

01:10:42.400 And she was talking about she was doing real policy at points, like trying to increase the refugees from Haiti.

01:10:48.540 She'd been-

01:10:49.260 I'm trying to remember some of the agenda items that she said she'd been put in charge of.

01:10:52.820 But then ultimately it ended, as it did repeatedly, between Omarosa and Trump, in ruination and despair, where she was fired by John Kelly, too, just as she was on The Apprentice.

01:11:05.840 Here, I'll show you The Apprentice firing in SOT 27.

01:11:08.900 By the way, all my life I've been hit on the head with plaster.

01:11:13.040 I just don't get it.

01:11:14.620 Oh, what?

01:11:15.620 Whoa.

01:11:16.360 I've been running for a week with my-

01:11:18.140 Life is full of problems.

01:11:19.540 You're fired.

01:11:22.340 That was a little tough one.

01:11:23.660 That was a tough one.

01:11:24.460 Go ahead, Ramin.

01:11:25.660 So I asked Trump why he took Omarosa to the White House, because I think that's a question that many of us had at the time, because, you know, obviously there was so much drama around her.

01:11:34.200 And he said sometimes he does things as an-

01:11:36.760 And this is going into sort of looking at him as a reality star and then also looking at him and the choices he makes as a politician.

01:11:43.340 He says he likes to do things as an experiment just to see he knows they're not going to work, but he just likes to do it as an experiment just to see if it's not going to work.

01:11:51.960 And I think he likes the drama.

01:11:53.900 He likes the chaos.

01:11:55.680 This book is called Apprentice in Wonderland because Jared Kushner and some reports from the White House once compared Trump to the Cheshire cat from Alice in Wonderland and that he really embraces confusion and likes to see people scramble and likes to see things turned upside down.

01:12:12.680 And I think by introducing Omarosa to the White House, he was programming a reality show, right?

01:12:17.200 He knew that she would be good for quote ratings, and he probably also knew, or at least he said to me, that it wouldn't end well, but he thought it would be something interesting just to watch.

01:12:26.460 And he's really interested in that.

01:12:28.180 He's interested in creating a spectacle, and he's also interested in creating so much of a spectacle that there's no room for headlines for anyone else, which is what we're seeing right now and, you know, obviously-

01:12:37.260 Okay, so this is where the rubber meets the road.

01:12:39.440 This is where the book gets really interesting because I love talking about The Apprentice.

01:12:42.840 I used to love the show, I'll be honest.

01:12:44.980 But what's really interesting about this book is that it shows us how all the things you and I have just discussed are preludes to and windows of insight into President Trump, how he got it and how he managed it when he had the presidency.

01:13:05.320 And that's such an interesting way into him, of all the bios that have been written about Trump.

01:13:11.280 That's such a new and interesting way into understanding him.

01:13:15.340 This is one of the things where even prior to becoming the host of The Apprentice, he used to pit, you write this in the book, like the New York Post and the New York Daily News against each other.

01:13:24.840 And then he gets on The Apprentice and he picks two to try to pit against each other there.

01:13:30.800 And then we did see him do the same thing in the White House.

01:13:35.540 And he treats his advisors in the White House like they're contestants on a reality show.

01:13:40.260 And he does pit them against each other.

01:13:42.080 And he does love firing people.

01:13:43.660 And he does love being, obviously, the boss in every room that he's in.

01:13:47.020 But this created the template for the politician that Trump became.

01:13:50.760 And this is a really underestimated, undervalued comparison.

01:13:54.560 I think often when political reporters are writing about Trump and the Trump White House, it goes from real estate to politics.

01:14:00.020 And Eric Trump and I talked about this.

01:14:01.380 Even Eric Trump said that this is part of his father's legacy.

01:14:04.900 This taught, being on The Apprentice, being in the boardroom, taught his father how to react to candidates when he debated them in 2016 in a very crowded Republican field.

01:14:14.340 It taught Trump how to use the-

01:14:16.420 And moderators, you point out in the book.

01:14:18.160 And moderators.

01:14:19.400 Can I, wait, actually, can I ask you about that?

01:14:20.900 Because I wanted to get-

01:14:22.180 Yeah.

01:14:23.080 So Eric still mentioned the question that you asked Trump in 2015.

01:14:27.560 He called it a, quote, sabotage question, which was a great question, by the way.

01:14:32.440 And why is it that you, 10 years later, they're still thinking about that?

01:14:38.000 I mean, you really, like, asked him a great question right out of the gate.

01:14:41.540 But why are we still talking about that question?

01:14:43.240 To me, I think it's because-

01:14:45.020 It's amazing.

01:14:45.940 It's because he's used to being on a reality show.

01:14:48.400 And when you're on a reality show, you create feuds, and you create fight, and you create unnecessary drama, and you're really mean to people and say completely crazy things because it's good for ratings.

01:14:59.460 And I think he follows that playbook.

01:15:01.220 And unfortunately, it was very hurtful and awful, and everyone came together to talk about how inappropriate that was.

01:15:07.120 But it's what he's been conditioned to do because he was a reality star.

01:15:12.600 Well, that's fascinating, Ramit.

01:15:14.720 I mean, I will tell you, it was like, it's crazy to me that we went through all the things.

01:15:18.280 And I remember you and I did an interview at the time.

01:15:19.920 We talked about it.

01:15:20.660 But, you know, all this time passed, and I interviewed him in September, last September.

01:15:25.680 So it's, you know, 2023.

01:15:27.820 And first I saw him in July at a Turning Point event, and then I sat down with him in September.

01:15:34.040 And both times, the very first thing he said to me was, did Roger Ailes know that you were going to ask me that question?

01:15:38.580 That's the first words out of his mouth both times at the debate.

01:15:44.240 And like I had answered, by the time I saw him in September, I had just answered it in July, but it's still on his mind.

01:15:48.760 And all I could think was, you've been the president since then.

01:15:53.480 Like, move on.

01:15:55.360 Why would you still be thinking about that?

01:15:58.220 But he does.

01:15:59.260 He brings it up still in his public events.

01:16:03.200 It's incredible to me.

01:16:05.080 I don't know why he's so obsessed with it, but I would suggest, for the record, that me suggesting in that question that Trump may have some issue with the Democrats using his history with women against him did prove valid to this day.

01:16:22.140 You were absolutely right.

01:16:23.200 You nailed it.

01:16:24.760 Like, that was exactly the question to ask him in the first debate, and you were right.

01:16:29.120 Because you're really kind of going over, like, what are your weaknesses?

01:16:32.180 What are people going to use against you?

01:16:33.360 Why should the Republicans nominate you or not nominate you?

01:16:36.420 And you could see it coming like a Mack truck.

01:16:38.120 I can see what they're going to use against you, sir.

01:16:39.860 But he took it very personally.

01:16:41.160 I think now we know why, because we've heard, even in this Trump trial, that behind the scenes, he was very worried about the woman issue.

01:16:48.140 He had already been worried about it, and it wasn't because of anything I did.

01:16:51.760 It was because he understood he was a playboy, and this is what the Democrats do.

01:16:54.760 Look what they did to poor Mitt Romney, just because he said binders full of women.

01:16:58.040 And so he saw it coming, and he thought that this would open up a floodgate that he didn't want open.

01:17:04.780 So I don't know why he still thinks about it, but I do think he, you're right, he likes drama, and he saw an opportunity to create drama between the two of us.

01:17:13.760 And he definitely had fun with it.

01:17:17.060 It was not fun for yours, truly, but thank God it's pretty much over.

01:17:22.180 He's, you know, he gets mad at me sometimes, but overall, I think we're fine, and I think Eric Trump was right.

01:17:29.060 He had a great response to my question with the Rosie O'Donnell, you know, like they were cheering him on in it.

01:17:33.420 So you would think he would just kind of move on, but he didn't move on.

01:17:36.440 And I think it was a combination of genuinely being irritated and worried and loving drama and needing it.

01:17:45.720 But he also always needs to face off against something or someone.

01:17:49.360 And so in all the time that I spent with him, he still remembers, even after he's been president of the United States,

01:17:54.800 he still remembers that Debra Messing was once nice to him, and now she's not nice to him.

01:17:59.260 He remembers that Ben Fler once came to his house, and now she says the nastiest things.

01:18:03.320 He really keeps track of every single – I mean, it's extraordinary that he has the time to do this.

01:18:08.800 He keeps track of every feud, every negative comment that anyone said.

01:18:13.580 He actually would ask sometimes one of his advisors, what have they said about me,

01:18:17.160 and try to weigh how hard he should punch at a certain person or a famous person based on what they've said about him.

01:18:22.720 It really is part of his image of if someone says anything negative about me, he's going to strike back so hard.

01:18:29.480 But it depends on the person, right, because even recently he was on the campaign stump,

01:18:34.000 and I had said something about him losing a step, you know, nothing in comparison to Joe Biden in my view,

01:18:40.440 but, you know, that I didn't think the Trump of 2024 was quite as fast as the Trump of 2016.

01:18:46.400 I mean, by political commentary standards, it was rather mild, but he clearly heard it and didn't like it.

01:18:51.640 And so he went out there and started hitting me, which is fine.

01:18:54.800 That's politics.

01:18:55.600 But I have to say, it did occur to me, like, why would he call out something like that,

01:19:02.520 a relatively benign observation of mine, when look at what they say about him every day,

01:19:09.140 all day on CNN up and down the lineup, MSNBC up and down the lineup, take any single Sunday show, ABC, NBC Nightly News.

01:19:16.940 Like, who cares about a passing mild comment?

01:19:21.520 So it does depend on the person, the people I think he thinks ought to, like, be uniformly in his camp

01:19:29.840 and, like, on his side because he was nice to them or whatever.

01:19:34.340 He gets mad.

01:19:35.720 And, you know, I've tried to explain to him many times, like, I'm not in your camp.

01:19:38.900 I'm a journalist.

01:19:39.660 I have to cover you fairly.

01:19:41.100 That's my only goal.

01:19:42.860 Well, he listens to your show, clearly.

01:19:44.580 He's probably listening to us right now.

01:19:46.940 He certainly watches some clips here and there.

01:19:48.900 That's for sure.

01:19:49.960 Okay.

01:19:50.140 But anyway, so he's out there doing, in the campaign for president, the same thing he did on The Apprentice and before.

01:19:56.540 And now he gets into the White House.

01:19:58.700 And this is the most fascinating part of the book to me.

01:20:02.760 You really zero in on how he did not get happier.

01:20:07.860 Trump's life really was not improved by this move from being the host of this huge show to being the leader of the free world.

01:20:19.460 No, it wasn't.

01:20:21.520 And when we talked, in all the times we talked together, when he told stories about The Apprentice, there was a different demeanor.

01:20:28.620 He was cracking jokes.

01:20:30.360 He was more relaxed.

01:20:31.460 He was more like the old Trump.

01:20:33.300 And then sometimes, because I went in there and I said, this is really about your connection to the media and television.

01:20:38.980 It's about it.

01:20:39.440 This is about this period of your life.

01:20:40.700 We don't have to go through every period as president.

01:20:43.100 We want to talk really about The Apprentice.

01:20:44.560 But then you've interviewed Trump.

01:20:45.780 You know that his stories can't be contained to one topic.

01:20:48.240 He says one thing and then he goes into something else and goes to something else.

01:20:50.580 And so then he would sort of go into these cascading stories about, you know, how people didn't listen to him as president.

01:20:57.560 People didn't value him as president.

01:20:59.740 There was a lot of negativity associated with his years as president.

01:21:03.100 And I think that's because the image that he has now is not of someone who is widely beloved.

01:21:09.340 It's more of a figure that, you know, there's half the country loves him and half the country doesn't.

01:21:13.540 And so I think he misses the days where everyone in America loved him.

01:21:17.020 And that was when he was a reality star.

01:21:18.620 When he was a reality star, everyone looked up to him and were excited to see him.

01:21:22.180 And things are different now.

01:21:23.200 And I think that is really that really triggers this frustration with him as a politician because he wants to be broadly popular and he wants to be liked by everyone.

01:21:33.560 Yeah.

01:21:34.240 And it's just not a possibility.

01:21:36.680 And in fact, he's been so demonized.

01:21:40.600 Like, that's what's so crazy about Trump.

01:21:42.500 That people are not able to, like, conceive of the notion that he likes to be provocative.

01:21:49.540 You know, it's much better to look at what Trump does than at what Trump says when trying to figure out what he will do, right, in the future.

01:21:59.340 He likes to be provocative, but they can't bake this into the cake when assessing him.

01:22:03.700 So the thing that made him a star also makes him one of the most controversial figures we've ever had in the presidential, in the presidency.

01:22:12.160 And people always wanted to know, because I told a small circle of friends that I was doing this book, they wanted to know, what is he like in the room?

01:22:18.300 Is he mean?

01:22:18.960 Is he scary?

01:22:19.720 Is he, does he say offensive things?

01:22:21.980 Does he use slurs?

01:22:23.260 And it's in the room.

01:22:24.160 Like, it is.

01:22:25.400 It's like, in the room, he's very charming.

01:22:27.820 He's charismatic.

01:22:28.760 He is.

01:22:29.480 He has this Bill Clinton quality where it's like, you're in the room and, you know, he's funny.

01:22:33.440 Uh, and he kept extending our time together.

01:22:36.680 He enjoyed talking to me, even though he would, you know, write about how awful journalists are and how terrible they are as he was sitting and talking to journalists.

01:22:43.260 He would then invite me back or he would, uh, you know, say, this is, you know, I don't have very much time.

01:22:48.180 And then we would have extra time.

01:22:49.940 Uh, he really loves to hear himself talk.

01:22:52.800 He loves to tell stories, but he's, you know, in the room, there's something very charismatic about him.

01:22:57.920 And I, you know, want to make sure that that's also conveyed in the book.

01:23:00.580 And, and he's very funny also in, in real life.

01:23:03.500 And sometimes I don't know if he's intentionally trying to be funny or if he's just funny, but there's a lot of things he says that are ironic or, uh, unexpected or surprising.

01:23:11.380 It's always very entertaining being in the room with Donald Trump.

01:23:14.300 Yeah, that's true.

01:23:15.240 I have had exactly the same experience.

01:23:17.120 All right, now stand by.

01:23:17.920 We're going to take a quick break and then we're going to come back and we're going to talk about some of the things that are in the news right now.

01:23:22.640 We discussed this a bit yesterday, but there's now a former staffer on The Apprentice who was pretty high up coming out and making,

01:23:29.900 renewing some incendiary allegations about Trump and things he allegedly said or didn't say.

01:23:36.060 We'll get into that next with Ramin, who stays with us.

01:23:39.200 You could be going into your 78th year enjoying this beautiful golf course.

01:23:44.260 Yeah.

01:23:44.800 Mar-a-Lago, your lovely family.

01:23:47.580 No.

01:23:48.000 Um, you don't have to be running for president, sitting for four criminal trials, some civil, and possibly looking at jail time.

01:23:56.340 No.

01:23:56.620 Is it worth it?

01:23:58.300 Yeah.

01:23:59.220 Uh, make America great again.

01:24:01.220 Our country's going to hell.

01:24:03.220 Our country's going down.

01:24:04.460 You don't realize it.

01:24:05.220 I don't believe you realize it.

01:24:06.380 But our country's going down.

01:24:07.920 Our country.

01:24:09.020 And I used to say we're going to end up being, if we don't do certain things, we're going to end up being Venezuela on steroids.

01:24:14.480 How about, how about we're buying oil now from Venezuela?

01:24:17.180 How about that?

01:24:17.780 We're making Venezuela rich.

01:24:20.860 Okay.

01:24:21.260 Think of it.

01:24:21.900 The people running Venezuela, which were total enemies, what we're doing is so crazy.

01:24:27.540 We're not using our oil.

01:24:28.780 We're making Venezuela rich.

01:24:31.020 But the country, I believe, has one last chance.

01:24:36.260 And that's this.

01:24:36.780 This is the most important election we've ever had.

01:24:38.700 Welcome back to The Megyn Kelly Show.

01:24:41.260 That was a bit from my interview with Donald Trump in September.

01:24:45.320 I'm joined today by Ramin Satuta.

01:24:47.200 His book, which is coming out on June 18th, is called Apprentice in Wonderland.

01:24:53.340 How Donald Trump and Mark Burnett took America through the looking glass, written with the cooperation of the former president.

01:25:00.240 And a fascinating window, speaking of windows, into the man, the president, and honestly, his effect on the country.

01:25:08.740 It's available for pre-order now.

01:25:10.220 Again, celebrity, or Apprentice in Wonderland.

01:25:14.240 So that's the real question, Ramin.

01:25:17.140 Like, do you think he regrets it?

01:25:19.120 Do you think he regrets leaving The Apprentice?

01:25:22.860 Because that's, you know, he left The Apprentice.

01:25:24.580 The next thing we knew, there was all speculation.

01:25:26.180 Will he renew or will he run for president?

01:25:28.320 He ran for president.

01:25:28.960 I think that that question that you asked, I remember thinking it at the time.

01:25:32.920 That is the question.

01:25:34.000 He could have been so much happier if he just stayed on The Apprentice.

01:25:37.000 And a lot of the executives at NBC, when Trump announced that he was running in 2015, thought this was, you know, he's just going to do this to get a little bit more publicity.

01:25:45.500 He's going to try to negotiate for a little more money.

01:25:47.460 And then he's going to go back to hosting The Apprentice.

01:25:50.100 And so one of the questions I asked him in our last meeting together was, if you had not become president of the United States, would you have tried to go back to The Apprentice?

01:25:58.960 Because I believe that that is what made him happiest.

01:26:02.900 And that is the job that he liked doing the best.

01:26:05.580 And he said no, because I think Donald Trump isn't one to, you know, admit that he's not doing the thing that he loves the most at this moment.

01:26:12.640 But I really do think that he never really wanted to say goodbye to the show permanently when he ran for president.

01:26:19.780 And I do think he misses the show.

01:26:21.380 And I really do think they left the boardroom intact.

01:26:25.520 When Trump was running for president in 2015, that's one of the things I uncovered in my reporting and talking to the Trump family and executive producers who worked on the show and Eric Trump.

01:26:33.140 They left the entire set, which was on the 14th floor of Trump Tower, in place as Trump was running for president and seeing whether or not this political thing would have longevity.

01:26:44.600 They were, you know, they clearly had plans for potentially going back.

01:26:49.120 Donald Trump wanted Ivanka to take over and become the next host.

01:26:51.980 And he wanted Eric and Don Jr. to be the boardroom advisors.

01:26:55.320 So this was something he really did want to keep in the family and wanted to keep extending future seasons of The Apprentice with the Trump brand, continuing to be part of it.

01:27:05.420 Wow.

01:27:06.260 Then he shocked the world and won and won.

01:27:10.240 That's I mean, it's just so crazy.

01:27:11.500 Now he's back again.

01:27:14.720 So one of the one of the things you cover in there is something that I remember well, and that is NBC turned on him short, very shortly into his run.

01:27:24.300 And they turned on their biggest star.

01:27:26.580 God, they're terrible over there.

01:27:27.960 But anyway, they turned on their biggest star because of his comments about Mexico is not sending their best people and kind of said, we'll never do business with him again.

01:27:38.580 Did you ask Trump?

01:27:39.680 I think you did.

01:27:40.300 Right.

01:27:40.480 About that and whether he believes the door was actually shut.

01:27:43.880 I did ask him about that.

01:27:45.600 He thinks he says that the one lesson that he learned from working in the industry is that regardless of what you say or what you do, as long as you have ratings, you will be hired.

01:27:55.940 Now, I don't know if that's necessarily true, but that is his impression.

01:27:58.860 His memory was cloudy in terms of getting the call, because I asked him specifically about what it was like that day when he received the call from NBC saying they were completely cutting ties.

01:28:08.560 They wouldn't air his pageants.

01:28:10.380 They would never have him back on The Apprentice.

01:28:11.980 And he couldn't remember that day or that memory.

01:28:14.560 But he thinks in his head, he thinks that if he wanted to go back and do something, there would be many offers.

01:28:21.220 But more importantly than that, I think he's also very hurt by NBC.

01:28:25.360 He feels like NBC, again, I don't know if this is logic that's true, but he feels that NBC covers him, or it's not logic that's true, but he feels NBC covers him toughly because they're upset that The Apprentice, he didn't stay on The Apprentice.

01:28:39.920 So he thinks that NBC thinks that Donald Trump betrayed NBC by leaving the show, and now NBC has a personal vendetta against them, and that's why they don't cover him favorably as a politician or as president.

01:28:51.080 Oh, wow.

01:28:51.980 No, I don't think that's it.

01:28:53.200 Having worked inside the building, it's genuinely ideological.

01:28:56.020 It's not The Apprentice snub.

01:28:58.240 That's my take on it.

01:28:59.220 Okay.

01:28:59.560 It's also a completely different division.

01:29:01.440 The news division and the entertainment division, it's not like the journalists in the building are going to be covering Jerry Seinfeld differently because Seinfeld once aired on NBC.

01:29:08.960 It doesn't add up, but in his mind, he equates the two.

01:29:12.900 Well, I mean, there's some logic there because it's like, had he continued doing The Apprentice, he would not have run for president, and they would have liked that much better, I think.

01:29:21.820 But, you know, that's not how it went.

01:29:23.560 So you get into whether he thinks he would have won and whether he would have won the presidency without The Apprentice.

01:29:32.440 What do you think?

01:29:33.060 What did he say?

01:29:33.540 So he, that answer changed slightly because we brought it up.

01:29:38.440 It came up almost in every conversation.

01:29:39.840 So initially he said, he told me that Mark Burnett and a lot of people around him said that there's no way he would have been president without The Apprentice.

01:29:46.620 He still thinks he would have been president.

01:29:48.940 But in one of our later conversations, he actually revealed something he's never said before in that if he had not been on The Apprentice, he probably or may not have run for the presidency and he may not have entered politics.

01:29:59.280 So clearly he is aware of the connection, he acknowledges the connection, and I think everyone in his orbit believes that because of the show he became president and without the show he probably wouldn't have been president of the United States of America.

01:30:11.580 Well, it's funny because now his detractors, including some who may have worked on the show, blame themselves, right?

01:30:18.280 Like we participated in his rise to fame and power and we atone for the sin.

01:30:23.500 And one of those people may or may not, I haven't heard him speak to this exactly, but is this number three guy on the show who's making the rounds right now.

01:30:32.620 He has a book out.

01:30:33.280 His name is Bill Pruitt, and he is a former producer of The Apprentice who's got a book out.

01:30:38.840 He's saying that he heard Trump use the N-word on the set of The Apprentice.

01:30:46.080 Trump has denied this vehemently, but this man claims there was a tape of it that also has been claimed for years.

01:30:53.000 It's never been produced.

01:30:54.580 Did you talk to Trump at all about this, I mean, renewed news?

01:31:00.120 We did.

01:31:00.740 It was actually something that he brought up on his own.

01:31:03.780 Again, when Trump starts telling stories, like I was wondering how I'm going to bring it up, and then he just started to talk about it.

01:31:10.040 Trump says that if the tape had existed, it would have come out by now.

01:31:14.220 He claims that he was not miked.

01:31:16.200 He did not use that word.

01:31:17.840 He said if he, then he hypothetically said if he were to use that word, he would not use it when it was miked.

01:31:22.500 But then, once again, denied the entire thing.

01:31:25.600 Mark Burnett also claims that there is no tape that exists.

01:31:28.480 I think that if the tape existed, it probably would have come out by now.

01:31:32.420 But Bill Pruitt has, he was, after the Access Hollywood tape, Bill Pruitt tweeted that the tape exists.

01:31:37.980 And that is when I think there were a lot of theories about where it existed.

01:31:42.960 A lot of journalists looked into the existence of the tape and tried to find the tape.

01:31:46.980 There were speculation that there's some bunker somewhere where they're holding all the footage and keeping it from journalists.

01:31:52.240 Trump denied that and said that, you know, that doesn't exist.

01:31:55.280 Mark Burnett also denied that and said that doesn't exist.

01:31:58.000 But in the new version of the story, I think that Bill Pruitt's saying he's now, I don't know if it was specific that he was, Trump was miked.

01:32:05.580 This was now a recollection of being in a conversation with him.

01:32:08.480 So there are different recollections of what exactly was said and what happened.

01:32:12.080 But as far as my investigation went and my questioning went, I was not able to find a tape or produce a tape, as many other journalists haven't either.

01:32:20.760 It's not going to happen.

01:32:23.380 Ramin, what a good idea.

01:32:25.320 What a fascinating bunch of insights into the most famous man in the world.

01:32:30.080 The book is called Apprentice in Wonderland.

01:32:33.740 You can preorder it now by Ramin Satuta.

01:32:36.140 All the best to you.

01:32:37.420 Thank you so much, Megan.

01:32:38.100 This has been great talking to you.

01:32:39.960 Likewise.

01:32:40.860 Okay, we're going to be back with a closing D-Day message.

01:32:43.260 I'm Megan Kelly, host of The Megan Kelly Show on SiriusXM.

01:32:47.840 It's your home for open, honest, and provocative conversations with the most interesting and important political, legal, and cultural figures today.

01:32:56.060 You can catch The Megan Kelly Show on Triumph, a SiriusXM channel featuring lots of hosts you may know and probably love.

01:33:03.400 Great people like Dr. Laura, Glenn Beck, Nancy Grace, Dave Ramsey, and yours truly, Megan Kelly.

01:33:09.900 You can stream The Megan Kelly Show on SiriusXM at home or anywhere you are.

01:33:14.820 No car required.

01:33:16.500 I do it all the time.

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01:33:25.840 Subscribe now.

01:33:26.560 Get your first three months for free.

01:33:28.660 Go to SiriusXM.com slash MKShow to subscribe and get three months free.

01:33:34.280 That's SiriusXM.com slash MKShow and get three months free.

01:33:40.660 Offer details apply.

01:33:47.940 Finally today, under the beautiful blue skies of France, a remembrance of the heroes who quite literally saved the world 80 years ago.

01:33:55.500 This very well may be the last major D-Day ceremony attended by those who actually stormed the beaches of Normandy.

01:34:02.480 About 150 American service members managed to make the journey to France today.

01:34:07.220 Sadly, one of them died en route.

01:34:09.620 It's a stark reminder that less than 1% of the more than 16 million Americans who served during World War II are still with us.

01:34:16.860 Once there, they received the hero's welcome that they so richly deserve.

01:34:19.920 But if you've ever spoken to a veteran of World War II, they never want to be called hero.

01:34:25.540 And yet, heroes they were.

01:34:27.020 Absolutely.

01:34:28.420 French President Emmanuel Macron honored 11 Americans with the Legion of Honor, France's highest civilian and military award.

01:34:35.140 Each veteran standing, some needing some assistance, as Mr. Macron pinned it on them and on behalf of a grateful nation and embraced them.

01:34:43.700 Time may have slowed down these veterans.

01:34:45.900 Their bodies may be failing a bit, but the pride in their eyes was something to behold.

01:34:51.580 These are the guys that did it.

01:34:53.560 One of the most poignant moments coming when a young service member read The Watch.

01:34:58.000 It's a poem that's traditionally recited when a naval officer retires.

01:35:01.900 Eighty years ago, they stood the watch so that we, our families, and our fellow countrymen and women can sleep soundly in safety each and every night,

01:35:19.980 knowing that these veterans stood the watch.

01:35:24.220 Today, we are here to say, World War II veterans, the watch stands relieved.

01:35:35.840 Relieved by those you have trained, guided, and led.

01:35:43.960 American World War II veterans, you stand relieved.

01:35:49.960 We have the watch.

01:35:54.500 So, teared up.

01:35:55.640 I love those moments.

01:35:57.400 God bless our servicemen and women, the guys in uniform, the guys who liberated the world.

01:36:02.860 Such a great reminder of the best America has to offer and the responsibility we all share in securing our nation's future.

01:36:10.480 Unfortunately, this being political season, not everyone took the high road.

01:36:15.200 Take a look at this tweet from Hillary Clinton.

01:36:17.200 80 years ago today, thousands of brave Americans fought to protect democracy on the shores of Normandy.

01:36:23.500 This November, all we have to do is vote.

01:36:26.740 She can't let it go, even on a day like this.

01:36:31.700 Well, to her, because for the rest of us, our minds and our hearts are in the right place.

01:36:37.040 Let us always remember and honor the sacrifices of our men and women in uniform, their families, and take the watch ever to heart.

01:36:47.060 Wow.

01:36:47.700 What a day.

01:36:49.080 Hug your kids.

01:36:49.720 Make sure they know what D-Day is all about, what their forefathers have done not so long ago, just a lifetime ago,

01:36:58.480 and that some of these heroes still roam this earth and need a prayer or a thought, and certainly all of our everlasting gratitude.

01:37:07.040 Thanks to all of you for being here with us today.

01:37:09.240 See you again tomorrow.

01:37:13.280 Thanks for listening to The Megyn Kelly Show.

01:37:15.200 No BS, no agenda, and no fear.

The Megyn Kelly Show - June 06, 2024

What Post-Verdict Polls Show, and How ＂Apprentice＂ Made Trump a Megastar, with Hogan Gidley, David Pakman, and Ramin Setoodeh ｜ Ep. 812

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